Chan Victor, Holcomb Tessa, Kaspar Justin R, Shields Robert C
Department of Oral Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR, USA.
J Oral Microbiol. 2025 Apr 4;17(1):2487643. doi: 10.1080/20002297.2025.2487643. eCollection 2025.
Activities that control cell shape and division are critical for the survival of bacteria. However, little is known about the circuitry controlling these processes in the dental caries pathogen .
We designed experiments to characterize two genes, and , in Assays included cell morphology imaging, protein interaction analysis, transcriptomics, proteomics, and biofilm studies to generate a comprehensive understanding of the role of MreCD in .
Consistent with participating in cell elongation, cells lacking these genes were found to be rounder than wild-type cells. Using bacterial two-hybrid assays, interactions between MreCD and several other proteins implicated in cell elongation were observed. Further characterization, using proteomics, revealed that the surface-associated proteome is different in mutants lacking . Consistent with these changes we observed altered sucrose-mediated biofilm architecture. Loss of also had a noticeable impact on bacteriocin gene expression, which could account in part for the observation that mutants had a diminished capacity to compete with commensal streptococci.
Our results provide evidence that cell elongation proteins are required for normal physiology and establish a foundation for additional examination of these and related proteins in this organism.
控制细胞形状和分裂的活动对细菌的生存至关重要。然而,对于龋齿病原体中控制这些过程的信号通路却知之甚少。
我们设计了实验来表征在[具体细菌名称]中的两个基因[基因名称1]和[基因名称2]。实验包括细胞形态成像、蛋白质相互作用分析、转录组学、蛋白质组学和生物膜研究,以全面了解MreCD在[具体细菌名称]中的作用。
与[具体细菌名称]参与细胞伸长一致,发现缺乏这些基因的细胞比野生型细胞更圆。使用细菌双杂交试验,观察到MreCD与其他几种参与细胞伸长的蛋白质之间的相互作用。通过蛋白质组学进一步表征发现,在缺乏[具体基因名称]的突变体中,表面相关蛋白质组有所不同。与这些变化一致,我们观察到蔗糖介导的生物膜结构发生改变。[具体基因名称]的缺失对细菌素基因表达也有显著影响,这可以部分解释[具体细菌名称]突变体与共生链球菌竞争能力减弱的现象。
我们的结果提供了证据,表明细胞伸长蛋白是[具体细菌名称]正常生理所必需的,并为进一步研究该生物体中的这些及相关蛋白质奠定了基础。