Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 1977 · 115 citations · 45 references
Life SciencesMolecular BiologyPhysiologyGene ExpressionGene RegulationTranscriptional RegulationCatabolite RepressionEnzyme RegulationGene Expression RegulationGene Regulation In PhysiologyPathway RegulationTranscriptional ControlActivator ProteinsBiosynthetic Enzyme RegulationBiosynthetic Gene RegulationEnzyme RepressionGene Expression ControlProphage BiologyProphage InductionRegulation Of Biosynthetic Enzymes
Regulation by a repressor protein is the mechanism selected when, in the organism's natural environment, there is low demand for expression of the regulated structural genes. Regulation by an activator protein is selected when there is high demand for expression of the regulated structural genes. These general conclusions are useful in relating physiological function to underlying molecular determinants in a wide variety of systems that includes repressible biosynthetic pathways, inducible biosynthetic enzymes, inducible drug resistance, and prophage induction, as well as inducible catabolic pathways, for which a special case of this prediction previously was reported [Savageau, M. A. (1974) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 71, 2453-2455].
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Autoregulation and Function of a Repressor in Bacteriophage Lambda
Mark Ptashne, Keith Backman, M. Z. Humayun et al. · Science · 1976 · 386 citations