Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
J Bacteriol. 2018 Sep 10;200(19). doi: 10.1128/JB.00228-18. Print 2018 Oct 1.
To adapt to ever-changing environments, pathogens quickly alter gene expression. This can occur through transcriptional, posttranscriptional, or posttranslational regulation. Historically, transcriptional regulation has been thoroughly studied to understand pathogen niche adaptation, whereas posttranscriptional and posttranslational gene regulation has only relatively recently been appreciated to play a central role in bacterial pathogenesis. Posttranscriptional regulation may involve chaperones, nucleases, and/or noncoding small RNAs (sRNAs) and typically controls gene expression by altering the stability and/or translation of the target mRNA. In this review, we highlight the global importance of posttranscriptional regulation to enterohemorrhagic (EHEC) gene expression and discuss specific mechanisms of how EHEC regulates expression of virulence factors critical to host colonization and disease progression. The low infectious dose of this intestinal pathogen suggests that EHEC is particularly well adapted to respond to the host environment.
为了适应不断变化的环境，病原体可以迅速改变基因表达。这可以通过转录、转录后或翻译后调控来实现。从历史上看，转录调控已经被深入研究，以了解病原体生态位适应，而转录后和翻译后基因调控只是最近才被认为在细菌发病机制中发挥核心作用。转录后调控可能涉及伴侣蛋白、核酸酶和/或非编码小 RNA（sRNA），通常通过改变靶 mRNA 的稳定性和/或翻译来控制基因表达。在这篇综述中，我们强调了转录后调控对肠出血性大肠杆菌（EHEC）基因表达的全球重要性，并讨论了 EHEC 如何调节对宿主定植和疾病进展至关重要的毒力因子表达的具体机制。这种肠道病原体的低感染剂量表明，EHEC 特别善于应对宿主环境。
