Involvement of the ytfK gene from the PhoB regulon in stationary-phase H2O2 stress tolerance in Escherichia coli

The Escherichia coli PhoB-PhoR two-component system responds to phosphate starvation and induces the expression of many genes. Previous studies suggested that phosphate starvation induces oxidative stress, but the involvement of the PhoB regulon in oxidative stress tolerance has not been clarified. Here, we showed that ytfK, one of the PhoB regulon genes, is involved in cell tolerance to a redox-cycling drug, menadione, and H2O2 in stationary-phase cells. A ytfK deletion mutant was sensitive to H2O2 when the cells were grown anaerobically or micro-aerobically in the presence of nitrate. Genetic analysis suggested that the ytfK gene has a functional relationship with the oxyR and fur genes, among the oxyR regulon, at least, a catalase-encoding katG gene and peroxidase-encoding ahpCF genes. Overproduction of YtfK resulted in a KatG-dependent decrease of H2O2 concentration in the cell suspension, suggesting that katG is one of the targets of YtfK. Using a katG′-lacZ reporter fusion, we showed that YtfK enhances the transcription of katG although it was not clarified whether YtfK functions directly or not. We also showed that ytfK disruption results in reduced viability of stationary-phase cells under phosphate starvation. These results indicated that YtfK is involved in H2O2 tolerance by stimulating directly or indirectly the transcription of at least the catalase gene, and that this system plays an important role in cellular survival during phosphate starvation.