Structural basis of response regulator function
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biochemistry, Biophysics, Microbiology, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- histidine kinase, response regulator, phosphorylation, signal transduction, transcription factor, two-component system
- Copyright
- © 2019 Gao et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Structural basis of response regulator function. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27554v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27554v2
Abstract
Response regulators function as the output components of two-component systems, which couple the sensing of environmental stimuli to adaptive responses. Response regulators typically contain conserved receiver (REC) domains that function as phosphorylation-regulated switches to control the activities of effector domains that elicit output responses. This modular design is extremely versatile, enabling different regulatory strategies tuned to the needs of individual signaling systems. This review summarizes functional features that underlie response regulator function. An abundance of atomic resolution structures and complementary biochemical data have defined the mechanisms for response regulator enzymatic activities, revealed trends in regulatory strategies utilized by response regulators of different subfamilies and provided insights into interactions of response regulators with their cognate histidine kinases. Among the hundreds of thousands of response regulators identified, variations abound. This article provides a framework for understanding structural features that enable function of canonical response regulators and a basis for distinguishing non-canonical configurations.
Author Comment
This manuscript has been accepted for publication in Annual Review of Microbiology (2019, vol. 73). No additional modifications have been made to this version of the manuscript. An updated, copyedited version of this article will be available on the Annual Reviews website.