From Catheter to Kidney Stone: The Uropathogenic Lifestyle of Proteus mirabilis.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Norsworthy AN
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5365347 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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From Catheter to Kidney Stone: The Uropathogenic Lifestyle of Proteus mirabilis.
Norsworthy Allison N AN Pearson Melanie M MM
Trends in microbiology 20161222 4
Proteus mirabilis is a model organism for urease-producing uropathogens. These diverse bacteria cause infection stones in the urinary tract and form crystalline biofilms on indwelling urinary catheters, frequently leading to polymicrobial infection. Recent work has elucidated how P. mirabilis causes all of these disease states. Particularly exciting is the discovery that this bacterium forms large clusters in the bladder lumen that are sites for stone formation. These clusters, and other steps o ...[more]
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Project description:This series of microarrays compares gene expression by the bacterial pathogen Proteus mirabilis when the transcriptional regulator mrpJ is deleted or induced to levels found during experimental urinary tract infection. The enteric bacterium Proteus mirabilis is associated with a significant number of catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Strict regulation of the antagonistic processes of adhesion and motility, mediated by fimbriae and flagella, respectively, is essential for successful disease progression. Previously, the transcriptional regulator MrpJ, which is encoded by the mrp fimbrial operon, has been shown to repress both swimming and swarming motility. Here we show that MrpJ affects a wide array of cellular processes beyond adherence and motility. Microarray analysis found that expression of mrpJ mimicking expression levels that occur during UTI leads to differential expression of 217 genes related to, among others, bacterial virulence, type VI secretion and metabolism. We probed the molecular mechanism of transcriptional regulation through MrpJ using reporter assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP). Two virulence-associated target genes, the flagellar master regulator flhDC and mrp itself, appear to be regulated through a binding site proximal to the transcriptional start, complemented by a more distantly situated enhancer site. Furthermore, an mrpJ deletion mutant colonized the bladders of mice at significantly lower levels in a transurethral model of infection. Additionally, we observe that mrpJ is widely conserved in a collection of recent clinical isolates, leading us to conclude that our results elucidate an unanticipated role of MrpJ as a global regulator of P. mirabilis virulence. Four biological replicates were analyzed for each set of arrays (P. mirabilis HI4320 wild type vs. ΔmrpJ, and vector pLX3607 vs. mrpJ plasmid pLX3805).
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Project description:Proteus mirabilis is a leading cause of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (UTIs) and urolithiasis. The transcriptional regulator MrpJ inversely modulates two critical aspects of P. mirabilis UTI progression: fimbria-mediated attachment to the urinary tract, and flagella-mediated motility. Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq) was used for the first time in a CAUTI pathogen to probe for in vivo direct targets of MrpJ. ChIP-seq revealed 81 78 direct MrpJ targets, including genes for motility, fimbriae and a type VI secretion system (T6SS), and the putative MrpJ binding sequence ACnCnnnnnnnGnGT.
2018-08-10 | GSE96042 | GEO