Midhat Patel 15:50, 27 February 2012 (EST): Can sigma factors be used to regulate gene expression? If we use a promoter associated with a sigma factor that operates under specific conditions, can it be used as a promoter for a system and integrated into E. coli?
Yi Kou 10:07, 3 March 2012 (EST): Good idea! Here is one paper of similar "genetic transplantation" of sigma factor[1]. But I think for actual application, it is not so simple as one factor and binding sequence could do the work. Many regulations, involving posttranslational regulation and auto-regulation have been confirmed for many types of sigma factors. And if these accompanies are not well considered, I think it would be hard to observe the expected result or phenotype. Also, it has been suggested that the sigma factor is not "on and off" the core pol but rather shows a "self-changing" pattern associated with the RNA pol[2]. This might add another influence of "interaction spectrum" with this sigma factor "transplantation" idea.

References

Talk:CH391L/S12/TranscriptionPromotersandTerminators