Differential expression of principal sigma factor homologues of Streptomyces aureofaciens correlates with the developmental stage.

In previous experiments, Streptomyces aureofaciens has been shown to contain four genes hrdA, hrdB, hrdD, and hrdE, encoding polypeptides very similar to principal sigma factors of RNA polymerase. Two apparent tandem promoters were identified for each of the hrdA, hrdB and hrdD genes by S1 nuclease mapping using RNA prepared of S. aureofaciens in various developmental stages. Under all the conditions studied, tandem promoters of each gene differed significantly in their respective strengths. Transcription from the hrd promoters depended on developmental stage. While hrdB is transcribed from both promoters in all developmental stages, both tandem promoters of the hrdD gene are active only in vegetative stage and transcription of the hrdA tandem promoters temporally correlates with the aerial mycelium formation. In addition to a promoter, hrdB-P2, which lies upstream of the open reading frame, the hrdB gene, proposed to encode functional principal factor, appeared to contain at least one internal promoter, hrdB-P1. Activity of all promoters was consistent with S1 mapping experiments after insertion of promoter-bearing DNA fragments to promoter-probe vectors pIJ486 and pARC1. The results implicate temporally different expression of the hrd genes during the differentiation of S. aureofaciens.