, 1995) was identified in the six pneumococcal strains, and its single-nucleotide variant TATGATAgAAT was found in the rest of the 23 genome sequences analyzed. Changes in this nucleotide are not critical Vincristine mouse for the binding of the σ subunit of the

RNA polymerase (Sevostyanova et al., 2007). A Shine- and Dalgarno-like sequence (SD) (AGGAGG) is located five nucleotides upstream of the gpdA start codon (AUG). As expected, the polycistronic transcript has a putative transcription start site within a purine (A) nucleotide located seven nucleotides downstream of the −10 extended promoter element. The putative promoter sequence consists of an extended −10 element without a −35 site and is situated 30 nucleotides upstream of the ATG initiation codon of the gpdA gene. Regarding pneumococcal promoters, we compared similar extended −10 elements of sulA (dihydropteroate synthase), murB (UDP-N-acetylenolpyruvoylglucosamine reductase), pcrA (ATP-dependent DNA helicase), comCDE operon, and fcsR (regulator of fucose operon) with the gpdA-galU promoter described herein (Chan et al., 2003; Ware et al., 2005; Ruiz-Masó et al., 2006 and Martin et al., 2010). These sequences match the consensus extended −10 region previously JNK inhibitor described by Sabelnikov et al. (1995) (TnTGnTATAAT). The nucleotides in the canonical −10 hexamer TATAAT are conserved in murB, pcrA, comCDE, fcsR,

and gpdA-galU (six strains). Moreover, −10 extended promoter element of comCDE showed an alteration of the T-TG extension. Also, −10 and −35 promoter elements found in fcsK (fuculose kinase),

yefM-yoeB (toxin–antitoxin), relB2 (antitoxin), and tts (βglucosyltransferase) genes were compared, and most of them showed −10 canonical element (TATAAT) and the −35 box (TTGACA) with minor differences (Llull et al., 2001; Chan et al., 2003, 2011; Nieto et al., 2006). On the other hand, ung (DNA-uracil glycosylase) and spxB (pyruvate oxidase) exhibit −10 extended promoter element and a −35 box (Ramos-Montañez et al., 2008; Ruiz-Cruz et al., 2010), (Fig. 3b). Semi-quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) was used to compare relative transcriptional Dolichyl-phosphate-mannose-protein mannosyltransferase abundance of galU transcripts at different points of the growth curve of S. pneumoniae R6. The results showed that galU-specific transcript levels in the exponential phase were 14-fold higher than during the other phases (Dunnet’s test, P < 0.05; Table 2), in agreement with that previously suggested for metabolic genes involved in biosynthetic processes whose expression is probably down-regulated in the stationary phase (Navarro Llorens et al., 2010). However, our results contrast with those carried out in Bacillus subtilis (Varón et al., 1993) and Lactobacillus casei (Wu et al., 2009) where the expression of the corresponding galU genes increased in the stationary phase.