Discovery of as a Global Regulator of Environmental Adaptation and Virulence in .

is an important aquatic microorganism that can cause fish hemorrhagic septicemia. In this study, we identified a novel LysR family transcriptional regulator (LahS) in the Chinese epidemic strain NJ-35 from a library of 947 mutant strains. The deletion of caused bacteria to exhibit significantly decreased hemolytic activity, motility, biofilm formation, protease production, and anti-bacterial competition ability when compared to the wild-type strain. In addition, the determination of the fifty percent lethal dose (LD) in zebrafish demonstrated that the deletion mutant () was highly attenuated in virulence, with an approximately 200-fold increase in LD observed as compared with that of the wild-type strain. However, the strain exhibited significantly increased antioxidant activity (six-fold). Label-free quantitative proteome analysis resulted in the identification of 34 differentially expressed proteins in the strain. The differentially expressed proteins were involved in flagellum assembly, metabolism, redox reactions, and cell density induction. The data indicated that LahS might act as a global regulator to directly or indirectly regulate various biological processes in NJ-35, contributing to a greater understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of