DNA Supercoiling: an Ancestral Regulator of Gene Expression in Pathogenic Bacteria?

DNA supercoiling acts as a global and ancestral regulator of bacterial gene expression. In this review, we advocate that it plays a pivotal role in host-pathogen interactions by transducing environmental signals to the bacterial chromosome and coordinating its transcriptional response. We present available evidence that DNA supercoiling is modulated by environmental stress conditions relevant to the infection process according to ancestral mechanisms, in zoopathogens as well as phytopathogens. We review the results of transcriptomics studies obtained in widely distant bacterial species, showing that such structural transitions of the chromosome are associated to a complex transcriptional response affecting a large fraction of the genome. Mechanisms and computational models of the transcriptional regulation by DNA supercoiling are then discussed, involving both basal interactions of RNA Polymerase with promoter DNA, and more specific interactions with regulatory proteins. A final part is specifically focused on the regulation of virulence genes within pathogenicity islands of several pathogenic bacterial species.