The role of nitrogen-responsive regulators in controlling inorganic polyphosphate synthesis in .

Inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) is synthesized by bacteria under stressful environmental conditions and acts by a variety of mechanisms to promote cell survival. While the kinase that synthesizes polyP (PPK, encoded by the gene) is well known, transcription is not activated by environmental stress and little is understood about how environmental stress signals lead to polyP accumulation. Previous work has shown that the transcriptional regulators DksA, RpoN (σ) and RpoE (σ) positively regulate polyP production, but not transcription, in .