Abstract
Members of the ROK family of proteins are mostly transcriptional regulators and kinases that generally relate to the control of primary metabolism, whereby its member glucose kinase acts as the central control protein in carbon control in Streptomyces. Here we show that deletion of SCO6008 (rok7B7) strongly affects carbon catabolite repression (CCR), growth and antibiotic production in Streptomyces coelicolor. Deletion of SCO7543 also affected antibiotic production, while no major changes were observed after deletion of the rok family genes SCO0794, SCO1060, SCO2846, SCO6566 or SCO6600. Global expression profiling of the rok7B7 mutant by proteomics and microarray analysis revealed strong up-regulation of the xylose transporter operon xylFGH, which lies immediately downstream of rok7B7, consistent with the improved growth and delayed development of the mutant on xylose. The enhanced CCR, which was especially obvious on rich or xylose-containing media, correlated with elevated expression of glucose kinase and of the glucose transporter GlcP. In liquid-grown cultures, expression of the biosynthetic enzymes for production of prodigionines (Red), siderophores and calcium dependent antibiotic (Cda) was enhanced in the mutant, and overproduction of Red was corroborated by MALDI-ToF analysis. These data present Rok7B7 as a pleiotropic regulator of growth, CCR and antibiotic production in Streptomyces.