In an anaerobic environment, Escherichia coli reduces nitrite rapidly to ammonia using either of two pathways.

There is a cytoplasmic, NADH-dependent nitrite reductase, NirBD, that is synthesized in response to the availability of high concentrations of nitrate. The alternative nitrite reductase, NrfAB, is located in the periplasm and is preferentially synthesized in response to the availability of low concentrations of nitrate. It was largely assumed that NO is a side product released during nitrite reduction by one or both of these nitrite reductases. Although there are experimental data to support this suggestion (Corker & Roole, 2003; Weiss, 2006), other studies with both E. coli and Salmonella enterica have implicated the nitrate reductase, NarG, as the enzyme that generates most of the NO when nitrite is abundant, but nitrate is unavailable (Calmels et al., 1988; Ralt et al., 1988; Metheringham selleck products & Cole, 1997; Gilberthorpe & Poole, 2008). Recently, it has been realized that five or more proteins catalyse the reduction of either NO itself or NO attached to nitrosylated proteins

or S-nitrosoglutathione. These include flavorubredoxin and its reductase (NorV-NorW), flavohaemoglobin (Hmp), cytochrome c nitrite reductase (NrfA), S-nitrosogluathione reductase, AdhC and possibly also the cytoplasmic nitrite reductase, NirBD. Considerable doubt remains about the concentration of NO that accumulates inside enteric buy GSI-IX bacteria, its physiological consequences and how rapidly cytoplasmic NO is generated or removed. Spiro (2007) has emphasized the need to distinguish between direct effects of physiological concentrations of NO on gene regulation, and secondary

effects due to chemical damage to iron-sulphur centres of transcription factors caused by higher concentrations of NO. Bacteria rarely, if ever, encounter NO at concentrations above 1 μM, the exception being intracellular bacteria, such as S. enterica in macrophages, where the concentration of NO has been estimated to be up to 10 μM (Raines et al., 2006). As NO is an uncharged small molecule that is freely diffusible across membranes, it is assumed that NO generated by the host will equilibrate Rapamycin nmr with the bacterial cytoplasm. We have found no direct evidence in the literature that this assumption is correct. A previously described method for detecting the accumulation of NO in the cytoplasm was based on the heterologous expression in E. coli of the NO-sensitive transcription factor, NNR, from Paracoccus denitrificans and its ability to activate transcription from an engineered E. coli melR promoter (Hutchings et al., 2000). A similar principle was used by Cruz-Ramos et al. (2002) to detect NO-induced damage to the transcription factor, FNR, and by Strube et al.