Identification and characterization of starvation induced msdgc-1 promoter involved in the c-di-GMP turnover

•The msdgc-1 promoter is starvation induced.•Exogenous addition of glucose decreases the promoter activity, significantly.•The transcription of msdgc-1 gene is SigA and SigB specific and growth dependent.•Links are found between c-di-GMP and (p)ppGpp signaling.•C-di-GMP signaling may be involved in the regulation of cell population density.

C-di-GMP [Bis-(3′-5′)-cyclic-dimeric-guanosine monophosphate], a second messenger is involved in intracellular communication in the bacterial species. As a result several multi-cellular behaviors in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria are directly linked to the intracellular level of c-di-GMP. The cellular concentration of c-di-GMP is maintained by two opposing activities, diguanylate cyclase (DGC) and phosphodiesterase (PDE-A). In Mycobacterium smegmatis, a single bifunctional protein MSDGC-1 is responsible for the cellular concentration of c-di-GMP. A better understanding of the regulation of c-di-GMP at the genetic level is necessary to control the function of above two activities. In this work, we have characterized the promoter element present in msdgc-1 along with the + 1 transcription start site and identified the sigma factors that regulate the transcription of msdgc-1. Interestingly, msdgc-1 utilizes SigA during the initial phase of growth, whereas near the stationary phase SigB containing RNA polymerase takes over the expression of msdgc-1. We report here that the promoter activity of msdgc-1 increases during starvation or depletion of carbon source like glucose or glycerol. When msdgc-1 is deleted, the numbers of viable cells are ~ 10 times higher in the stationary phase in comparison to that of the wild type. We propose here that msdgc-1 is involved in the regulation of cell population density.