3b), which was consistent with the SDS-PAGE results. Similarly, in glucose medium, the glxR mutant displayed 2.1–3.4-fold higher specific activities of ICL and MS, respectively, when compared with the wild type. It has been hypothesized that GlxR can significantly repress the expression of the glyoxylate PD 332991 bypass genes in the presence of glucose, as the intracellular concentration of cAMP, a modulator of GlxR activity, is higher in glucose than in acetate-grown C. glutamicum (Kim et al., 2004; Cha et al., 2010). However,

the glxR mutant showed a similar derepression in the case of ICL and MS, irrespective of the carbon source (Fig. 3). Thus, the transcriptional regulation of the aceB and aceA genes was further investigated in an acetate and glucose medium using the glxR mutant. The mutant showed a 15- and 4-fold increase in β-galactosidase activity when the transcription of the promoterless lacZ gene was driven, respectively, by the promoters of aceB (pBL) and aceA (pAL) in the glucose medium, whereas it relieved less than twofold β-galactosidase activity in the acetate medium (Fig. 4). Therefore, these results indicate that GlxR represses aceB and aceA not only in the presence of glucose but also in the

presence of acetate. CRP is a representative global regulator for CCR, which establishes the priorities in carbon metabolism, in E. coli. However, not much experimental evidence for CCR in C. glutamicum is available, even though the CCR phenomenon has been reported in glutamate uptake (Krämer & Lambert, 1990; Kronemeyer et al., JQ1 mw 1995), ethanol utilization (Arndt & Eikmanns, 2007) and gluconate utilization Carnitine palmitoyltransferase II (Letek et al., 2006; Frunzke et al., 2008). To explore whether GlxR is involved in CCR related to the glutamate uptake system encoded by the gluABCD operon, the β-galactosidase activity was examined in the glxR mutant and the wild type harbouring the gluA promoter–lacZ fusion plasmid pGL. In agreement with previous results (Parche et al., 2001), the expression of gluA was repressed fivefold when the wild-type strain was grown in a medium

containing glucose, or glucose and glutamate when compared with the expression with the glutamate-grown wild type (Table 2). In contrast, the glxR mutant derepressed the expression of gluA in the presence of glucose, showing 74% activity of glutamate-grown cells (Table 2). These results confirm that glutamate uptake is regulated by CCR, and that GlxR represses the utilization of glutamate in the presence of glucose. Recently, a potential GlxR regulon that covers diverse cellular processes including central carbohydrate metabolism was reported (Kohl et al., 2008). However, little is known about the functional role of the CRP homologue, GlxR, in vivo, as the construction of a glxR mutant is difficult due to the growth defect phenotype.