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Volume 169, Issue 10

Reciprocal regulation of NagC and quorum sensing systems and their roles in expression and biofilm formation in Open Access

This article is part of the Environmental Sensing and Cell-Cell Communication collection.

Abstract

Biofilm formation by is regulated by quorum sensing (QS) and dependent on the haemin storage locus , required for the extracellular polysaccharide poly--acetylglucosamine (poly-GlcNAc) production. In NagC regulates both GlcNAc biosynthesis and metabolism with GlcNAc acting as a signal that co-ordinates these and other activities. However, the contribution of NagC and GlcNAc to biofilm development in is not known. Here we show that a mutant is impaired for biofilm production on abiotic (glass) and biotic () surfaces. Genetic complementation restored poly-GlcNAc production and biofilm formation on . Using -based promoter fusions, expression was found to be dependent. Given that NagC and QS both regulate aggregation and biofilm formation, we investigated their regulatory relationship using -based promoter fusions. These revealed that (i) is negatively autoregulated, but expression can be partially restored in the mutant by exogenous GlcNAc, (ii) NagC negatively regulates the and QS genes and (iii) expression is reduced in the , and mutants but not the mutant. These data establish the existence of a reciprocal regulatory relationship between NagC and QS, which in the case of the pair , is also GlcNAc-dependent. NagC and GlcNAc are therefore components of a regulatory system involving QS that modulates biofilm formation and aggregation.

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Keyword(s): biofilm , hmsHFRS , N-acetylglucosamine , NagC , quorum and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Award BB/I021876/1.)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulWilliams
© 2023 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2023-10-10
2024-05-04
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Reciprocal regulation of NagC and quorum sensing systems and their roles in hmsHFRS expression and biofilm formation in Yersinia pseudotuberculosis
Microbiology 169, 001397 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001397
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001397
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001397
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