When arabinose is absent, cells do not need the araBAD products for breaking down arabinose. Therefore, dimeric AraC acts as a repressor: one monomer binds to the operator of the araBAD gene (araO2), another monomer binds to a distant DNA half site known as araI1. This leads to the formation of a DNA loop.
What happens if arabinose is absent?
If arabinose is absent, the dimer AraC protein represses the structural gene by binding to araI1 and araO2 and the DNA forms a loop, which prevents RNA polymerase from binding to the promoter of the ara operon, thereby blocking transcription. ... This breaks the DNA loop.
What is the purpose of arabinose?
Arabinose acts as an allosteric regulator of AraC, changing which DNA sites it binds to and how it forms a dimer. Remember that arabinose is the sugar that gets catabolized by the proteins of the AraBAD operon. When arabinose is added to the environment in which E. coli live, it binds tightly to AraC.
