scholarly journals Acidithiobacillus Its Application in Biomining Using a Quorum Sensing Modulation Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Caicedo ◽  
Sonia Villamizar

A group of particular acidophiles microorganisms (bacteria and archaea) known as chemolithoautotrophs are capable of using minerals as fuel. Its oxidation generates electrons to obtain energy and carbon that is obtained by fixing CO2 from the air. During this aerobic mineral oxidation, metals are solubilized or biodegraded. Metal bioleaching usually is used in biomining and urban biomining approaches to recovery metals such as copper, gold and zinc. Several species of bacterial genus Acidithiobacillus display a great bioleaching activity. Bacterial attachment and biofilm formation are the initial requirements to begin a successful bioleaching process. Biofilm formation in Acidithiobacillus bacteria is strongly regulated by cell to cell communication system called Quorum Sensing. The goal of this chapter is to review the Quorum Sensing system mediated by the autoinducer N-acyl- homoserine-lactones in the Bacterium Acidiothiobacillus ferroxidans, in order to enhance and to boost the bioleaching technologies based in the use of this bacterium. The main applications of the cell-to-cell communication system concepts in A. ferrooxidans are reviewed in this chapter. It is that the addition of synthetic autoinducers molecules, which act as agonist of quorum sensing system, especially those with long acyl chains, both as single molecules (C12-AHL, 3-hydroxy-C12-AHL, C14-AHL, and 3-hydroxy-C14-AHL) or as a mixture (C14-AHL/3- hydroxy-C14-AHL/3-oxo-C14-AHL) increased the adhesion to sulfur and pyrite and enhance the metal bioleaching in urban biomining approaches.

2002 ◽  
Vol 184 (20) ◽  
pp. 5686-5695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie M. Marketon ◽  
Matthew R. Gronquist ◽  
Anatol Eberhard ◽  
Juan E. González

ABSTRACT Sinorhizobium meliloti is a soil bacterium which can establish a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with the legume Medicago sativa. Recent work has identified a pair of genes, sinR and sinI, which represent a potential quorum-sensing system and are responsible for the production of N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) in two S. meliloti strains, Rm1021 and Rm41. In this work, we characterize the sinRI locus and show that these genes are responsible for the synthesis of several long-chain AHLs ranging from 12 to 18 carbons in length. Four of these, 3-oxotetradecanoyl HL, 3-oxohexadecenoyl HL, hexadecenoyl HL, and octadecanoyl HL, have novel structures. This is the first report of AHLs having acyl chains longer than 14 carbons. We show that a disruption in sinI eliminates these AHLs and that a sinR disruption results in only basal levels of the AHLs. Moreover, the same sinI and sinR mutations also lead to a decrease in the number of pink nodules during nodulation assays, as well as a slight delay in the appearance of pink nodules, indicating a role for quorum sensing in symbiosis. We also show that sinI and sinR mutants are still capable of producing several short-chain AHLs, one of which was identified as octanoyl HL. We believe that these short-chain AHLs are evidence of a second quorum-sensing system in Rm1021, which we refer to here as the mel system, for “S. meliloti.”


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Sun ◽  
Zhaohui Ni ◽  
Jie Tang ◽  
Yue Ding ◽  
Xinlei Wang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTAcinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative pathogen that has emerged as one of the most troublesome pathogens for health care institutions globally. Bacterial quorum sensing (QS) is a process of cell-to-cell communication that relies on the production, secretion and detection of autoinducer (AI) signals to share information about cell density and regulate gene expression accordingly. In this study, we performed a comprehensive set of experiments show that deletion of quorum sensing genes showed differences in growth characteristics, morphology, biofilm formation and virulence, and increased susceptibility to some antimicrobials and exhibited motility defects. RNA-seq analysis indicated that genes involved in various aspects of energy production and conversion, Valine, leucine and isoleucine degradation and lipid transport and metabolism showed different expression.IMPORTANCEPrevious studies on bacterial quorum sensing mainly focused on biofilm formation and motility and antibiotic resistance. In this study, we focused on detecting the role of the abaI/abaR QS system in the virulence of A. baumannii. Our work provides a new insight into abaI/abaR quorum sensing system effects pathogenicity in A. baumannii. We propose that targeting the AHL synthase enzyme abaI could provide an effective strategy for attenuating virulence. On the contrary, interdicting the autoinducer synthase–receptor abaR elicits unpredictable consequences, which may lead to enhanced bacterial virulence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Su ◽  
Kaihao Tang ◽  
Jiwen Liu ◽  
Yan Wang ◽  
Yanfen Zheng ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Bridges ◽  
Bonnie L. Bassler

AbstractVibrio cholerae possesses multiple quorum-sensing systems that control virulence and biofilm formation among other traits. At low cell densities, when quorum-sensing autoinducers are absent, V. cholerae forms biofilms. At high cell densities, when autoinducers have accumulated, biofilm formation is repressed and dispersal occurs. Here, we focus on the roles of two well-characterized quorum-sensing autoinducers that function in parallel. One autoinducer, called CAI-1, is used to measure vibrio abundance, and the other autoinducer, called AI-2, is a broadly-made universal autoinducer that is presumed to enable V. cholerae to assess the total bacterial cell density of the vicinal community. The two V. cholerae autoinducers funnel information into a shared signal relay pathway. This feature of the quorum-sensing system architecture has made it difficult to understand how specific information can be extracted from each autoinducer, how the autoinducers might drive distinct output behaviors, and in turn, how the bacteria use quorum sensing to distinguish self from other in bacterial communities. We develop a live-cell biofilm formation and dispersal assay that allows examination of the individual and combined roles of the two autoinducers in controlling V. cholerae behavior. We show that the quorum-sensing system works as a coincidence detector in which both autoinducers must be present simultaneously for repression of biofilm formation to occur. Within that context, the CAI-1 quorum-sensing pathway is activated when only a few V. cholerae cells are present, whereas the AI-2 pathway is activated only at much higher cell density. The consequence of this asymmetry is that exogenous sources of AI-2, but not CAI-1, contribute to satisfying the coincidence detector to repress biofilm formation and promote dispersal. We propose that V. cholerae uses CAI-1 to verify that some of its kin are present before committing to the high-cell-density quorum-sensing mode, but it is, in fact, the universal autoinducer AI-2, that sets the pace of the V. cholerae quorum-sensing program. This first report of unique roles for the different V. cholerae autoinducers suggests that detection of self fosters a distinct outcome from detection of other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 79 (10) ◽  
pp. 4050-4060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge E. Vidal ◽  
Herbert P. Ludewick ◽  
Rebekah M. Kunkel ◽  
Dorothea Zähner ◽  
Keith P. Klugman

ABSTRACTStreptococcus pneumoniaeis the leading cause of death in children worldwide and forms highly organized biofilms in the nasopharynx, lungs, and middle ear mucosa. TheluxS-controlled quorum-sensing (QS) system has recently been implicated in virulence and persistence in the nasopharynx, but its role in biofilms has not been studied. Here we show that this QS system plays a major role in the control ofS. pneumoniaebiofilm formation. Our results demonstrate that theluxSgene is contained by invasive isolates and normal-flora strains in a region that contains genes involved in division and cell wall biosynthesis. TheluxSgene was maximally transcribed, as a monocistronic message, in the early mid-log phase of growth, and this coincides with the appearance of early biofilms. Demonstrating the role of the LuxS system in regulatingS. pneumoniaebiofilms, at 24 h postinoculation, two different D39ΔluxSmutants produced ∼80% less biofilm biomass than wild-type (WT) strain D39 did. Complementation of these strains withluxS, either in a plasmid or integrated as a single copy in the genome, restored their biofilm level to that of the WT. Moreover, a soluble factor secreted by WT strain D39 or purified AI-2 restored the biofilm phenotype of D39ΔluxS. Our results also demonstrate that during the early mid-log phase of growth, LuxS regulates the transcript levels oflytA, which encodes an autolysin previously implicated in biofilms, and also the transcript levels ofply, which encodes the pneumococcal pneumolysin. In conclusion, theluxS-controlled QS system is a key regulator of early biofilm formation byS. pneumoniaestrain D39.


2007 ◽  
Vol 189 (22) ◽  
pp. 8333-8338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomohiro Morohoshi ◽  
Yuta Nakamura ◽  
Go Yamazaki ◽  
Akio Ishida ◽  
Norihiro Kato ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT A number of gram-negative bacteria have a quorum-sensing system and produce N-acyl-l-homoserine lactone (AHL) that they use them as a quorum-sensing signal molecule. Pantoea ananatis is reported as a common colonist of wheat heads at ripening and causes center rot of onion. In this study, we demonstrated that P. ananatis SK-1 produced two AHLs, N-hexanoyl-l-homoserine lactone (C6-HSL) and N-(3-oxohexanoyl)-l-homoserine lactone (3-oxo-C6-HSL). We cloned the AHL-synthase gene (eanI) and AHL-receptor gene (eanR) and revealed that the deduced amino acid sequence of EanI/EanR showed high identity to those of EsaI/EsaR from P. stewartii. EanR repressed the ean box sequence and the addition of AHLs resulted in derepression of ean box. Inactivation of the chromosomal eanI gene in SK-1 caused disruption of exopolysaccharide (EPS) biosynthesis, biofilm formation, and infection of onion leaves, which were recovered by adding exogenous 3-oxo-C6-HSL. These results demonstrated that the quorum-sensing system involved the biosynthesis of EPS, biofilm formation, and infection of onion leaves in P. ananatis SK-1.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Herran ◽  
Pierre Grève ◽  
Jean-Marc Berjeaud ◽  
Joanne Bertaux ◽  
Alexandre Crépin

Abstract Legionella spp. are ubiquitous bacteria principally found in water networks and around 20 species are implicated in Legionnaire’s disease. Among them, Legionella pneumophila is an intracellular pathogen of environmental protozoa, responsible for about 90% of cases in the world. Legionella pneumophila regulates in part its virulence by a quorum sensing system named “Legionella quorum sensing”, composed of a signal synthase LqsA, two histidine kinase membrane receptors LqsS and LqsT and a cytoplasmic receptor LqsR. To date, this communication system was only found in L. pneumophila. Here we investigated 58 Legionella genomes to determine the presence of a lqs cluster or homologous receptors using tblastn. This analysis revealed three categories of species: 19 harboured a complete lqs cluster, 20 did not possess lqsA but maintained the receptor lqsR and/or lqsS, and 19 did not have any of the lqs genes. No correlation was observed between pathogenicity and the presence of a quorum sensing system. We determined by RT-qPCR that the lqsA gene was expressed at least in four strains among different species available in our laboratory. Furthermore, we showed that the lqs genomic region was conserved even in species possessing only the receptors of the quorum sensing system, indicating an ancestral acquisition and various loss dynamics during evolution. This system could therefore function in inter-specific communication as well.


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