Protein Deacetylase CobB Interplays with c-di-GMP

As a ubiquitous bacterial secondary messenger, c-di-GMP plays key regulatory roles in processes such as bacterial motility and transcription regulation. CobB is the Sir2 family protein deacetylase that controls energy metabolism, chemotaxis and DNA supercoiling in many bacteria. Using an E.coli proteome microarray, we found that c-di-GMP strongly binds to CobB. Protein deacetylation assays showed that c-di-GMP inhibits CobB activity and thereby modulates the biogenesis of acetyl-CoA. Through mutagenesis studies, residues R8, R17 and E21 of CobB were shown to be required for c-di-GMP binding. Next, we found that CobB is an effective deacetylase of YdeH, a major diguanylate cyclase (DGC) of E.coli that is endogenously acetylated. Mass spectrometry analysis identified YdeH K4 as the major site of acetylation, and it could be deacetylated by CobB. Interestingly, deacetylation of YdeH enhances its stability and cyclase activity in c-di-GMP production. Thus, our work establishes a novel negative feedback loop linking c-di-GMP biogenesis and CobB-mediated protein deacetylation.