Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, United States.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2019 Dec 11;9:421. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2019.00421. eCollection 2019.
Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens exist as planktonic cells only at limited times during their life cycle. In response to environmental signals such as temperature, pH, osmolality, and nutrient availability, pathogenic bacteria can adopt varied cellular fates, which involves the activation of virulence gene programs and/or the induction of a sessile lifestyle to form multicellular surface-attached communities. In , SsrB is the response regulator which governs the lifestyle switch from an intracellular virulent state to form dormant biofilms in chronically infected hosts. Using the lifestyle switch as a paradigm, we herein compare how other pathogens alter their lifestyles to enable survival, colonization and persistence in response to different environmental cues. It is evident that lifestyle switching often involves transcriptional regulators and their modification as highlighted here. Phenotypic heterogeneity resulting from stochastic cellular processes can also drive lifestyle variation among members of a population, although this subject is not considered in the present review.
革兰氏阳性和革兰氏阴性病原体在其生命周期中仅在有限的时间内以浮游细胞的形式存在。为了响应环境信号，如温度、pH 值、渗透压和营养物质的可用性，病原菌可以采用不同的细胞命运，这涉及到毒力基因程序的激活和/或形成多细胞表面附着群落的静止生活方式的诱导。在 中，SsrB 是响应调节剂，它控制着从细胞内毒力状态到在慢性感染宿主中形成休眠生物膜的生活方式转变。本文以 生活方式转变为例，比较了其他病原体如何改变其生活方式，以使其在不同的环境线索下生存、定殖和持续存在。显然，生活方式的转变通常涉及转录调节剂及其修饰，如本文所述。表型异质性也可以由随机的细胞过程驱动，从而导致种群成员之间的生活方式变化，尽管这一主题不在本综述的考虑范围内。
