Stress responses of bacteria

Bacteria, irrespective of natural habitat, are exposed to constant fluctuations in their growth conditions. Consequently they have developed sophisticated responses, modulated by the re-modelling of protein complexes and by phosphorylation-dependent signal transduction systems, to adapt to and to survive a variety of insults. Ultimately these signalling systems affect transcriptional regulons either by activating an alternative sigma factor subunit of RNA polymerase, for example, sigmaE (σE) of Escherichia coli and sigmaB (σB) and sigmaF (σF) in Bacillus subtilis or by activating DNA-binding two-component response regulators. Recent structure determinations, and systems biology analysis of key regulators in well-characterised stress-responsive pathways, illustrate conserved and novel mechanisms in these representative model bacteria.