Secreted-protein response to sigmaU activity in Streptomyces coelicolor.

The filamentous bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor forms an aerial mycelium as a prerequisite to sporulation, which occurs in the aerial hyphae. Uncontrolled activity of the extracytoplasmic function sigma factor sigmaU blocks the process of aerial mycelium formation in this organism. Using a green fluorescent protein transcriptional reporter, we have demonstrated that sigU transcription is autoregulated.