Abstract

Using yeast two-hybrid assay, we investigated protein-protein interactions between all orthologous histidine kinase (HK)/response regulator (RR) pairs of M. tuberculosis H37Rv and identified potential protein-protein interactions between a noncognate HK/RR pair, DosT/NarL. The protein interaction between DosT and NarL was verified by phosphotransfer reaction from DosT to NarL. Furthermore, we found that the DosT and DosS HKs, which share considerable sequence similarities to each other and form a twocomponent system with the DosR RR, have different crossinteraction capabilities with NarL: DosT interacted with NarL, while DosS did not. The dimerization domains of DosT and DosS were shown to be sufficient to confer specificity for DosR, and the different cross-interaction abilities of DosS and DosT with NarL were demonstrated to be attributable to variations in the amino acid sequences of the α2-helices of their dimerization domains.

• Keywords: histidine kinase; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; protein interaction; response regulator; two-component system