Iron chelator-inducible expression system for Escherichia coli.

The PentC promoter of the entCEBA operon encoding enzymes for enterobactin biosynthesis in Escherichia coli is tightly regulated by the availability of iron in the culture medium. In iron-rich conditions, the PentC promoter activity is strongly repressed by the global transcription regulator Fur (ferric uptake regulator), which complexes with ferrous ions and binds to the Fur box 19-bp inverted repeat. In this study, we have constructed the expression vector pOS2 containing the PentC promoter and characterized its repression, induction, and modulation by quantifying the expression of the lacZ reporter gene encoding beta- galactosidase.