As shown in Fig. 1a, the colony size of strain Δpeps was considerably smaller than that of strain JM101 on M9 agar medium. When cell growth Afatinib cell line was monitored in flask cultivations, strain Δpeps did not grow in M9 medium (Fig. 1b). This growth deficiency was substantially restored by supplementing casamino acids in M9 medium. We then examined the effect of dipeptide addition on cell growth of strain Δpeps on M9 agar plate. As a result, it was revealed that several dipeptides, including Ala-Gln, inhibited the growth of strain Δpeps. Among these dipeptides,

we chose Ala-Gln and glycyl-l-tyrosine (Gly-Tyr), the structure of which is rather different from Ala-Gln. When Ala-Gln or Gly-Tyr was added to M9 agar medium, colony formation was not observed in strain Δpeps (Fig. 1a). In contrast, strain JM101 could grow

under the same condition by degrading dipeptides to amino acids. These results indicate that Ala-Gln or Gly-Tyr themselves, not their component amino acids, have an inhibitory effect on a multiple peptidase-deficient Autophagy Compound Library supplier E. coli. Because Ala-Gln addition was inhibitory on strain Δpeps, it was expected that active efflux of Ala-Gln was mediated by a family of transmembrane proteins referred to as multidrug-efflux transporters. Therefore, we transformed strain Δpeps with plasmids carrying one of the 34 coding sequences assumed to be a multidrug-efflux transporter gene in E. coli and examined the effect of their overexpression on the growth of strain Δpeps in the presence of

either Ala-Gln or Gly-Tyr (Fig. 2a). Of these 34 genes, bcr, norE, ydeE and yeeO conferred resistance to Ala-Gln or Gly-Tyr. In contrast, overexpression of acrAB, emrAB, emrE, emrKY, marRAB, rhtA, rhtB, rhtC, yajR, ybjG, yceE, yceL, ydeA, ydeD, ydhC, yeaS, yedA, yegB, yfiK, yfiS, ygaZ, ygeD, yggA, yidY, yieO, yjeH, yjiO, ykuC, ymtF or yrgJ genes had no influence on the very growth of strain Δpeps (data not shown). Accordingly, the four genes were chosen as candidates for dipeptide transporters. Table 2 lists the four multidrug-efflux transporter genes being considered as dipeptide transporter candidates. To further examine the effect of overexpression of four multidrug-efflux transporter genes selected by dipeptide resistance, cell growth was monitored in flask cultivation. Growth of strain Δpeps was defective in M9 glucose liquid medium even with no addition of dipeptides (Fig. 1b). There are two possibilities considered as the cause of the hampered growth of strain Δpeps. One is the reduced availability of intracellular amino acids derived from protein degradation due to the loss of peptidase activity. This is partially true because the addition of casamino acids to M9 medium significantly improved the growth of strain Δpeps (Fig. 1b). However, this effect seemed to be general because the same result was obtained in the parental strain JM101.