Abstract
The Escherichia coli melR gene encodes the MelR transcription factor that controls melibiose utilization. Expression of melR is autoregulated by MelR, which represses the melR promoter by binding to a target that overlaps the transcript start. Here, we show that MelR-dependent repression of the melR promoter can be enhanced by the presence of a second single DNA site for MelR located up to 250 base pairs upstream. Parallels with AraC-dependent repression at the araCaraBAD regulatory region and the possibility of the MelR-dependent repression loop formation are discussed. The results show that MelR bound at two distal loci can cooperate together in transcriptional repression.