The Transcriptional Heat Shock Response of Salmonella Typhimurium Shows Hysteresis and Heated Cells Show Increased Resistance to Heat and Acid Stress

• We investigated if the transcriptional response of Salmonella Typhimurium to temperature and acid variations was hysteretic, i.e. whether the transcriptional regulation caused by environmental stimuli showed memory and remained after the stimuli ceased. The transcriptional activity of non-replicating stationary phase cells of S. Typhimurium caused by the exposure to 45°C and to pH 5 for 30 min was monitored by microarray hybridizations at the end of the treatment period as well as immediately and 30 minutes after conditions were set back to their initial values, 25°C and pH 7. One hundred and two out of 120 up-regulated genes during the heat shock remained up-regulated 30 minutes after the temperature was set back to 25°C, while only 86 out of 293 down regulated genes remained down regulated 30 minutes after the heat shock ceased. Thus, the majority of the induced genes exhibited hysteresis, i.e., they remained up-regulated after the environmental stress ceased. At 25°C the transcriptional regulation of genes encoding for heat shock proteins was determined by the previous environment. Gene networks constructed with up-regulated genes were significantly more modular than those of down-regulated genes, implying that down-regulation was significantly less synchronized than up-regulation. The hysteretic transcriptional response to heat shock was accompanied by higher resistance to inactivation at 50°C as well as cross-resistance to inactivation at pH 3; however, growth rates and lag times at 43°C and at pH 4.5 were not affected. The exposure to pH 5 only caused up-regulation of 12 genes and this response was neither hysteretic nor accompanied of increased resistance to inactivation conditions. Cellular memory at the transcriptional level may represent a mechanism of adaptation to the environment and a deterministic source of variability in gene regulation. © 2012 Pin et al.

Keyword

heat shock protein

acid tolerance

acidity

article

cellular stress response

controlled study

cross resistance

down regulation

gene regulatory network

genetic transcription

growth rate

heat shock response

heat tolerance

hysteresis

nonhuman

nucleotide sequence

Salmonella typhimurium

temperature

transcription regulation

upregulation

Analysis of Variance

Antifreeze Proteins

Gene Expression Regulation

Heat-Shock Response

Hot Temperature

Hydrogen-Ion Concentration

Microarray Analysis

Protein Folding

Transcription

Genetic

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)