Project description:Specific amino acids, purine ribonucleosides, or a combination of the two is required for efficient germination of endospores of Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579. A survey including 20 different amino acids showed that l-alanine, l-cysteine, l-threonine, and l-glutamine are capable of initiating the germination of endospores of B. cereus ATCC 14579. In addition, the purine ribonucleosides inosine and adenosine can trigger germination of the spores. Advanced annotation of the B. cereus ATCC 14579 genome revealed the presence of seven putative germination (ger) operons, termed gerG, gerI, gerK, gerL, gerQ, gerR, and gerS. To determine the role of the encoded putative receptors in nutrient-induced germination, disruption mutants were constructed by the insertion of pMUTIN4 into each of the seven operons. Four of the seven mutants were affected in the germination response to amino acids or purine ribonucleosides, whereas no phenotype could be attributed to the mutants with disrupted gerK, gerL, and gerS loci. The strain with a disrupted gerR operon was severely hampered in the ability to germinate: germination occurred in response to l-glutamine but not in the presence of any of the other amino acids tested. The gerG mutant showed significantly reduced l-glutamine-induced germination, which points to a role of this receptor in the l-glutamine germination signaling pathway. gerR, gerI, and gerQ mutants showed reduced germination rates in the presence of inosine, suggesting a role for these operons in ribonucleoside signaling. Efficient germination by the combination of l-glutamine and inosine was shown to involve the gerG and gerI operons, since the germination of mutants lacking either one of these receptors was significantly reduced. Germination triggered by the combination of l-phenylalanine and inosine was lost in the gerI mutant, indicating that both molecules are effective at the GerI receptor.
Project description:N-acetylquinovosamine (2-acetamido-2,6-di-deoxy-D-glucose, QuiNAc) is a relatively rare amino sugar residue found in glycans of few pathogenic gram-negative bacteria where it can play a role in infection. However, little is known about QuiNAc-related polysaccharides in gram-positive bacteria. In a routine screen for bacillus glycan grown at defined medium, it was surprising to identify a QuiNAc residue in polysaccharides isolated from this gram-positive bacterium. To gain insight into the biosynthesis of these glycans, we report the identification of an operon in Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579 that contains two genes encoding activities not previously described in gram-positive bacteria. One gene encodes a UDP-N-acetylglucosamine C4,6-dehydratase, (abbreviated Pdeg) that converts UDP-GlcNAc to UDP-4-keto-4,6-D-deoxy-GlcNAc (UDP-2-acetamido-2,6-dideoxy-?-D-xylo-4-hexulose); and the second encodes a UDP-4-reductase (abbr. Preq) that converts UDP-4-keto-4,6-D-deoxy-GlcNAc to UDP-N-acetyl-quinovosamine in the presence of NADPH. Biochemical studies established that the sequential Pdeg and Preq reaction product is UDP-D-QuiNAc as determined by mass spectrometry and one- and two-dimensional NMR experiments. Also, unambiguous evidence for the conversions of the dehydratase product, UDP-?-D-4-keto-4,6-deoxy-GlcNAc, to UDP-?-D-QuiNAc was obtained using real-time 1H-NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The two genes overlap by 4 nucleotides and similar operon organization and identical gene sequences were also identified in a few other Bacillus species suggesting they may have similar roles in the lifecycle of this class of bacteria important to human health. Our results provide new information about the ability of Bacilli to form UDP-QuiNAc and will provide insight to evaluate their role in the biology of Bacillus.
Project description:The food-borne human pathogen Bacillus cereus is found in environments that often have a low pH, such as food and soil. The physiological response upon exposure to several levels of acidity were investigated of B. cereus model strain ATCC 14579, to elucidate the response of B. cereus to acid stress. pH 5.4, pH 5.0, pH 4.8 and pH 4.5 were selected to conduct microarray analyses, based on the differences in physiological response upon exposure to the acid conditions. The transcriptome data revealed response specific profiles. Showing mechanisms induced upon all the different acid down-shocks, such as nitrate reductase and energy production genes, and several genes specifically expressed differentially in mild or lethal levels of acidity, such as F1F0-ATPase and cydAB. Furthermore, mechanisms involved in oxidative stress response were found highly up-regulated in response to both mild and lethal acid stress. The induction of oxidative stress related genes may be a response to the formation of reactive oxygen species by a perturbation of the electron transport chain. Therefore, the formation of hydroxyl radicals and/ or peroxynitrite was monitored upon exposure to the different levels of acidity with a fluorescent probe in a flow cytometer. The formation of these oxidative compounds was shown to be specific for lethal pHs and a model to relate radical formation with the observed transcriptome profiles was proposed.
Project description:Bacillus cereus is the second leading cause of collective food poisoning in France. B. cereus is also associated with severe clinical infections leading to patient death in 10% of the cases. The emergence of B. cereus as a foodborne and opportunistic pathogen has intensified the need to distinguish strains of public health concern. In this work, by performing a screen on a large collection of B. cereus strains of varying pathogenic potential, we identified genetic determinants capable of discriminating B. cereus strains inducing negative clinical outcomes. The combination of 4 biomarkers is sufficient to accurately discern clinical strains from harmless strains. Three of the biomarkers are located on the chromosome, with a fourth one identifying a plasmid carried by most pathogenic strains. A 50 kbp region of this plasmid promotes the virulence potential of these strains and could thus be defined as a new pathogenicity island of B. cereus. These new findings help in the understanding of B. cereus pathogenic potential and complexity and may provide tools for a better assessment of the risks associated with B. cereus contamination to improve patient health and food safety.
Project description:Enterocin AS-48 is produced by Enterococcus faecalis S48 to compete with other bacteria in their environment. Due to its activity against various Gram positive and some Gram negative bacteria it has clear potential for use as a food preservative. Here, we studied the effect of enterocin AS-48 challenges on vegetative cells of Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579 by use of transcriptome analysis.
Project description:This data article reports changes in the cellular and exoproteome of B. cereus cured from pBClin15.Time-course changes of proteins were assessed by high-throughput nanoLC-MS/MS. We report all the peptides and proteins identified and quantified in B. cereus with and without pBClin15. Proteins were classified into functional groups using the information available in the KEGG classification and we reported their abundance in term of normalized spectral abundance factor. The repertoire of experimentally confirmed proteins of B. cereus presented here is the largest ever reported, and provides new insights into the interplay between pBClin15 and its host B. cereus ATCC 14579. The data reported here is related to a published shotgun proteomics analysis regarding the role of pBClin15, "Deciphering the interactions between the Bacillus cereus linear plasmid, pBClin15, and its host by high-throughput comparative proteomics" Madeira et al. [1]. All the associated mass spectrometry data have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange Consortium (http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org) via the PRIDE partner repository (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/), with the dataset identifier PRIDE: PXD001568, PRIDE: PXD002788 and PRIDE: PXD002789.
Project description:A comparative transcriptome approach was used to assess genes involved in metabolism and pathogenesis that are specifically activated during anaerobic growth of the spore-forming food-borne human pathogen Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579. Growth under anaerobic conditions in Brain Heart Infusion broth revealed a reduced growth rate and a lower yield as compared to that under aerobic conditions. Comparative transcriptome analysis of cells harvested at early- and mid-exponential growth phase, transition phase and stationary phase, subsequently showed hundreds of genes to be induced under anaerobic condition. These included novel genes identified for anaerobic growth of B. cereus, encoding metabolic pathways, such as the arginine deiminase pathway (ArcABDC), a formate dehydrogenase (FdhF) and a pyruvate fomate lyase (Pfl), and alternative respiratory proteins, such as arsenate reductases. Furthermore, the nitrosative stress response was induced in the anaerobic transition phase of growth, conceivably due to the production of nitric oxide as a by-product of nitrite and nitrate respiration. Notably, both hemolytic enzyme and enterotoxin encoding genes were activated in different oxygen limiting conditions, i.e. hemolytic enzyme encoding genes were induced during anaerobic growth, whereas enterotoxin encoding genes were induced in the transition and stationary phase of aerobic cultures reaching a high cell density. These data point to metabolic rearrangements, stress adaptation and activation of the virulent status of B. cereus under anaerobic conditions, such as encountered in the human GI-tract. Keywords: time course, anaerobic growth