The RstAB System Impacts Virulence, Motility, Cell Morphology, Penicillin Tolerance and Production of Type II Secretion System-Dependent Factors in the Fish and Human Pathogen Photobacterium damselae subsp. damselae

This study establishes RstAB as a major regulator of virulence and diverse cellular functions in P. damselae subsp. damselae. Introduction Two-component signal transduction systems enable bacteria to sense environmental stimuli and transfer this information across the cytoplasmic membrane to the cytoplasm (Stock et al., 2000). Such systems consist of a membrane-embedded protein kinase which acts as a sensory component, and its cognate response regulator, a cytoplasmic transcriptional factor. When the sensory component of the pair is stimulated by a specific signal, it autophosphorylates a histidine residue and then transfers the phosphate group to a conserved aspartate residue of the response regulator. Photobacterium damselae subsp. damselae (hereafter Pdd) is a marine bacterium pathogenic for a variety of marine animals as well as for humans, and represents an emerging threat for fish species of financial importance in marine aquaculture (Rivas et al., 2013a; Terceti et al., 2016; Osorio et al., 2018). pPHDD1 plasmid encodes two major virulence factors, the phospholipase-D damselysin (Dly) and the pore-forming toxin phobalysin P (PhlyP) (Rivas et al., 2011; Rivas et al., 2015a). Additional virulence factors are encoded within the chromosomes and include the pore-forming toxin phobalysin C (PhlyC), the phospholipase PlpV and the collagenase ColP (Rivas et al., 2013b; Vences et al., 2017). While production of PhlyC and PlpV are almost ubiquitous traits in this subspe...
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research