ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbial Physiology and Metabolism
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1597530
cAMP-CRP-activated E. coli causes growth arrest under stress conditions
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan
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Cells are exposed to various kinds of stress, obliging them to cope with the challenges they encounter. Upon subjecting E. coli cells to oxidative stress induced by elevated concentrations of hydrogen peroxide or plumbagin, as well as osmotic stress by elevated NaCl concentrations, cell growth stopped immediately after stress and it resumed after a period of time. In the present study, we found that the stress-induced growth arrest disappeared when the gene for cAMP synthesis (cyaA) or its receptor protein (crp) was deleted, whereas it reappeared when cAMP is exogenously added to ∆cyaA cells. With increasing stress intensity, the period of growth arrest increased in the wild-type cells, while ∆cyaA or ∆crp cells continued to grow without arrest, although their growth rates were reduced. These results indicate that E. coli cell has a novel cAMP-CRP-dependent mechanism to stop cell growth temporarily for adaptation to new environment when subjected to a strong stress, whether oxidative or osmotic stress.
Keywords: Growth arrest, cAMP, salt stress, Oxidative Stress, E. coli
Received: 21 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haque, Tarusawa, Ushida, Ito and Himeno. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hyouta Himeno, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, 036-8561, Aomori, Japan
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