Physiological Roles and Adverse Effects of the Two Cystine Importers of Escherichia coli

Abstract

In general, intracellular metabolite pools are kept at steady, nontoxic levels by a sophisticated combination of transcriptional and allosteric controls. Surprisingly, in E. coli allosteric control is utterly absent from the primary importer of cystine. This flaw allows massive overimport of cystine, which causes acute vulnerability to oxidative stress and is remedied only by wasteful cysteine efflux. The lack of import control may be rationalized by the unusual properties of cysteine itself. This phenomenon justifies the existence of countervailing cysteine export systems, whose purpose is otherwise hard to understand. It also highlights an unexpected link between sulfur metabolism and oxidative damage. Although this investigation focused upon E. coli, experiments confirmed that similar phenomena occur in other species.