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Identification of the membrane protein SucE and its role in succinate transport in Corynebacterium glutamicum

  • Biotechnologically Relevant Enzymes and Proteins
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Abstract

Succinic acid is excreted during anaerobiosis by many bacteria, and manifold applications are known making the biotechnological production of succinate attractive. Although the pathways for succinate formation are known, succinate export is not understood in most of the succinate producing bacteria. Here, we present a bioinformatic approach for identification of a putative succinate export system in Corynebacterium glutamicum. The subsequent screening revealed that a mutant in the gene cg2425 is impaired in succinate production or transport under anaerobic conditions. A function of the Cg2425 protein as import system was excluded. In contrast, a role of the Cg2425 protein as succinate export system was indicated by accumulation of increased amounts of internal succinate under anaerobic conditions in a Cg2425-dependent manner and a concomitant impairment of external succinate accumulation. In conclusion, we propose that Cg2425 participates in succinate export in C. glutamicum and suggest the name SucE for the protein.

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Acknowledgments

The excellent technical assistance of Anja Wittmann is acknowledged. The financial support by the BMBF (grant 0313805H; GenoMik Plus) and the Max Planck Society to EJ is gratefully acknowledged. The sdh mutant was kindly provided by Dr. Jung-Won Youn, University of Bielefeld.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biochemistry, University of Cologne, 50674, Cologne, Germany

    Stephanie Huhn, Elena Jolkver, Reinhard Krämer & Kay Marin

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  1. Stephanie Huhn
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  2. Elena Jolkver
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  3. Reinhard Krämer
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  4. Kay Marin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kay Marin.

Additional information

Stephanie Huhn and Elena Jolkver contributed equally.

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Table S1

Bacteria, plasmids and primers used in this study (PDF 16 kb)

Table S2

List of C. glutamicum genes encoding proteins identified by the comparative genome analysis of C. glutamicum, Actinobacillus succinigenes and M. succiniciproducens. The locus tag according to the annotation of NC_009655, known or predicted functions, number of transmembrane domains (TMD) as well as the transporter class according to the transporter classification data base TCDB are listed. Genes labelled by an asterisk were inactivated by insertion mutagenesis (PDF 9 kb)

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Huhn, S., Jolkver, E., Krämer, R. et al. Identification of the membrane protein SucE and its role in succinate transport in Corynebacterium glutamicum . Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 89, 327–335 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2855-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2855-1

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