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The process by which various upstream sensor and signal-transduction domains of bacterial histidine kinases (HKs) modulate the activity of the conserved autokinase domain remains poorly understood. Specifically, why do most HKs contain modularly inserted signal transduction domains? How do HKs robustly evolve and finetune the coupling between stimulus sensor domains and the conserved autokinase domain, which are often separated by 10s of nanometers? What is the role of these intervening domains in fine-tuning signaling parameters such as the minimum/maximum responsiveness, mid-point, and steepness of signal transition of an HK? In this work, we examine signal transduction through model E. coli HKs, PhoQ and CpxA, which contain one of the most abundant signal transduction domains in HKs, the HAMP domain. We first generate a large set of single-point mutants of PhoQ, and …