PNNL

Abstract

Despite intense interest in the response to radiation in D. radiodurans, little is known about how the organism responds to other stress factors. Our previous studies indicated that D. radiodurans mounts a regulated protective response to heat shock, and that expression of the groESL and dnaKJ operons are induced in response to elevated temperature. In order to gain greater insight into the heat shock response of D. radiodurans on a more global scale, we undertook the study reported here. Using whole-cell semiquantitative mass spectrometric proteomics integrated with global transcriptome microarray analyses, we have determined a core set of highly induced heat shock genes whose expression correlates well at the transcriptional and translational levels. In addition, we observed that the higher the absolute expression of a given gene at physiological conditions, the better the quantitative correlation between RNA and protein expression levels.