The Fur superfamily: metal sensing transcription factors in bacteria
Iron is an essential element for all living organisms. The iron-sensing transcriptional regulators detect the availability of iron inside and around the living organisms, and modulate the expression of target genes that are involved in the cellular homeostasis of iron. Among the iron-sensing transcriptional regulators, Fur (ferric uptake regulator) proteins are widely distributed in bacteria. Fur superfamily proteins are metal-sensing transcription factors. In spite of nearly identical structures, diverse Fur subfamilies are specialized to sense metals other than iron, such as zinc (Zur), manganese (Mur), heme iron (Irr), and nickel (Nur), to control homeostasis of each metal. Furthermore, they recognize different DNA sequences. We solved the crystal structures of Nur and Zur and revealed the structural basis for their metal selectivity and metal-dependent conformational change. Through the structural studies about all Fur subfamilies, we aim to understand how the specialization of each Fur subfamily in metal sensing and DNA recognition is achieved within the same structural context.
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