The Effect of pstS and phoB on Quorum Sensing and Swarming Motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

PLoS One

Inna Blus-Kadosh¹  Gal Yerushalmi¹  Anat Zilka²  Ehud Banin² 

[1] The Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel;The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

关键词: Phosphates;    Pseudomonas aeruginosa;    Pathogen motility;    Phenotypes;    Plasmid construction;    Phosphatases;    Opportunistic infections;    Pseudomonas infections;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.pone.0074444

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause a wide range of infections and inflammations in a variety of hosts, such as chronic biofilm associated lung infections in Cystic Fibrosis patients. Phosphate, an essential nutrient, has been recognized as an important signal that affects virulence in P. aeruginosa. In the current study we examined the connection between phosphate regulation and surface motility in P. aeruginosa. We focused on two important genes, pstS, which is involved in phosphate uptake, and phoB, a central regulator that responds to phosphate starvation. We found that a mutant lacking pstS is constantly starved for phosphate and has a hyper swarming phenotype. Phosphate starvation also induced swarming in the wild type. The phoB mutant, on the other hand, did not express phosphate starvation even when phosphate was limited and showed no swarming. A double mutant lacking both genes (pstS and phoB) showed a similar phenotype to the phoB mutant (i.e. no swarming). This highlights the role of phoB in controlling swarming motility under phosphate-depleted conditions. Finally, we were able to demonstrate that PhoB controls swarming by up-regulating the Rhl quorum sensing system in P. aeruginosa, which resulted in hyper production of rhamonlipids: biosurfactants that are known to induce swarming motility.

【 授权许可】

CC BY