Gamma-Glutamylpolyamine Synthetase GlnA3 Is Involved in the First Step of Polyamine Degradation Pathway in M145

M145 was shown to be able to grow in the presence of high concentrations of polyamines, such as putrescine, cadaverine, spermidine, or spermine, as a sole nitrogen source. However, hardly anything is known about polyamine utilization and its regulation in streptomycetes. In this study, we demonstrated that only one of the three proteins annotated as glutamine synthetase-like protein, GlnA3 (SCO6962), was involved in the catabolism of polyamines. Transcriptional analysis revealed that the expression of was strongly induced by exogenous polyamines and repressed in the presence of ammonium. The Δ mutant was shown to be unable to grow on defined Evans agar supplemented with putrescine, cadaverine, spermidine, and spermine as sole nitrogen source. HPLC analysis demonstrated that the Δ mutant accumulated polyamines intracellularly, but was unable to degrade them. In a rich complex medium supplemented with a mixture of the four different polyamines, the Δ mutant grew poorly showing abnormal mycelium morphology and decreased life span in comparison to the parental strain. These observations indicated that the accumulation of polyamines was toxic for the cell. An analysis of the GlnA3 protein model suggested that it might act as a gamma-glutamylpolyamine synthetase catalyzing the first step of polyamine degradation. GlnA3-catalyzed glutamylation of putrescine was confirmed in an enzymatic assay and the GlnA3 reaction product, gamma-glutamylputrescine, was detected by HPLC/ESI-MS. In this work, the first step of polyamine utilization in has been elucidated and the putative polyamine utilization pathway has been deduced based on the sequence similarity and transcriptional analysis of homologous genes expressed in the presence of polyamines.