A genome-wide study of two-component signal transduction systems in eight newly sequenced mutans streptococci strains

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Georg Conrads¹  Anke Brock¹  Irene Wagner-Döbler²  Padhmanand Sudhakar³  Jibin Sun³  Wei Wang³  An-Ping Zeng³  Lifu Song⁴ 

[1] Division of Oral Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Operative and Preventive Dentistry & Periodontology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;Group Microbial Communication, Division of Microbial Pathogenesis, Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research, Inhoffenstr 7, 38124, Braunschweig, Germany;Institute of Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany;Institute of Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany;Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Science, 300308, Tianjin, Peoples Republic of China;

关键词: Mutans streptococci;    Streptococcus mutans;    Streptococcus ratti;    Streptococcus sobrinus;    Two-component system;    Histidine kinase;    Response regulator;    Signal transduction;    Comparative genomics;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-13-128

 received in 2011-08-10, accepted in 2012-04-04,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMutans streptococci are a group of gram-positive bacteria including the primary cariogenic dental pathogen Streptococcus mutans and closely related species. Two component systems (TCSs) composed of a signal sensing histidine kinase (HK) and a response regulator (RR) play key roles in pathogenicity, but have not been comparatively studied for these oral bacterial pathogens.ResultsHKs and RRs of 8 newly sequenced mutans streptococci strains, including S. sobrinus DSM20742, S. ratti DSM20564 and six S. mutans strains, were identified and compared to the TCSs of S. mutans UA159 and NN2025, two previously genome sequenced S. mutans strains. Ortholog analysis revealed 18 TCS clusters (HK-RR pairs), 2 orphan HKs and 2 orphan RRs, of which 8 TCS clusters were common to all 10 strains, 6 were absent in one or more strains, and the other 4 were exclusive to individual strains. Further classification of the predicted HKs and RRs revealed interesting aspects of their putative functions. While TCS complements were comparable within the six S. mutans strains, S. sobrinus DSM20742 lacked TCSs possibly involved in acid tolerance and fructan catabolism, and S. ratti DSM20564 possessed 3 unique TCSs but lacked the quorum-sensing related TCS (ComDE). Selected computational predictions were verified by PCR experiments.ConclusionsDifferences in the TCS repertoires of mutans streptococci strains, especially those of S. sobrinus and S. ratti in comparison to S. mutans, imply differences in their response mechanisms for survival in the dynamic oral environment. This genomic level study of TCSs should help in understanding the pathogenicity of these mutans streptococci strains.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Song et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.