Project description:Invasive pneumococcal disease is preceded by asymptomatic colonization of the human nasopharynx by Streptococcus pneumoniae. Progression from colonization to invasion is a watershed in the host-pathogen interaction, and exposes the pneumococcus to markedly different microenvironments. This in turn, requires alterations in gene expression profile to adapt to the new niche. One apparent adaptive mechanism is reversible phase variation between “transparent” and “opaque” colony opacity phenotypes. Transparent phase variants colonize the nasopharynx more efficiently than opaque variants of the same strain, while opaque variants exhibit higher systemic virulence. Previous studies have reported quantitative differences in surface components such as the capsule, teichoic acid and certain surface proteins between the two phenotypes, but the underlying regulatory mechanism is not understood. In the present study, we found no differences in expression of key surface proteins between opaque and transparent variants of S. pneumoniae strain D39, but opaque cells produced five-fold more capsular polysaccharide. Subsequent microarray and real-time RT-PCR analysis showed no differences in capsule gene expression, but several genes involved in uridine monophosphate (UMP) biosynthesis were up-regulated in the opaque phenotype. This correlated with significant increases in the intracellular concentrations of both UMP and UDP-glucose, which are essential precursors for capsule biosynthesis. Our data suggest a novel mechanism for pneumococcal capsule regulation, in which rate-limiting precursor pathways are modulated rather than the capsule biosynthetic genes themselves. Keywords: Phase variants
Project description:Transcriptome comparison of bguR mutant to wild-type in the Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 grown in GM17 The human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae has the ability to use the carbon- and energy source cellobiose due to the presence of a cellobiose-utilizing gene cluster (cel locus) in its genome. This system is regulated by the cellobiose-dependent transcriptional activator CelR, which has been previously shown to contribute to pneumococcal virulence. To get a broader understanding of the response of S. pneumoniae to cellobiose, we compared the pneumococcal transcriptome during growth on glucose as the main carbon source to that with cellobiose as the main carbon source. The expression of various carbon metabolic genes was altered, including a PTS operon (which we here denote as the bgu operon) that has high similarity with the cel locus. In contrast to the cel locus, the bgu operon is conserved in all sequenced strains of S. pneumoniae, indicating an important physiological function in the lifestyle of pneumococci. We next characterized the transcriptional regulation of the bgu operon in more detail. Its expression was increased in the presence of cellobiose, and decreased in the presence of glucose. A novel GntR-type transcriptional regulator (which we here denote as BguR) was shown to act as a transcriptional repressor of the bgu operon and its repressive effect was relieved in the presence of cellobiose. BguR-dependent repression was demonstrated to be mediated by a 20-bp DNA operator site (5M-bM-^@M-^Y-AAAAATGTCTAGACAAATTT-3M-bM-^@M-^Y) present in PbguA as verified by promoter truncation experiments. In conclusion, we have identified a new cellobiose-responsive PTS operon, together with its transcriptional regulator in S. pneumoniae. One condition design, comparison of two strains including a dye swap
Project description:Reversible or phenotypic tolerance to antibiotics within microbial populations has been implicated in treatment failure of chronic infections and development of persister cells. However, the molecular mechanisms regulating phenotypic drug tolerance are largely unknown. In this study, we identified a four-gene operon in Streptococcus pneumoniae that contributes to phenotypic tolerance to vancomycin (ptv). RNA-Seq, qRT-PCR, and luciferase reporter experiments revealed that transcription of the ptv operon (consisting of ptvR, ptvA, ptvB and ptvC) is induced by pneumococcal exposure to vancomycin. Further investigation showed that the transcription of the ptv operon is repressed by PtvR, a PadR-family repressor; transcriptional induction of the ptv operon by vancomycin is achieved by transcriptional de-repression of this locus. Importantly, de-repression of ptvABC significantly enhanced the levels of vancomycin-tolerant pneumococci. Gene fusion and deletion analyses revealed that PtvA, PtvB and PtvC are membrane-associated proteins, and all required for the PtvR-regulated phenotypic tolerance to vancomycin. Finally, gel-shifting test with recombinant PtvR uncovered that PtvR represses the transcription of the ptv operon by binding to two palindromic sequences of the ptv promoter. Together, the ptv locus represents a novel inducible system for pneumococcal response to stressful conditions, including those caused by antibiotics.
Project description:Transcriptome comparison of the Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 wild-type grown in M17 medium to grown in M17 medium + 10mM ascorbic acid (AM17).
Project description:Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is a major human respiratory pathogen and the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia worldwide. Small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs), which often act by post-transcriptionally regulating gene expression, have been shown to be crucial for the virulence of S. pneumoniae and other bacterial pathogens. Over 170 putative sRNAs have been identified in S. pneumoniae TIGR4 strain (serotype 4) through transcriptomic studies, and a subset of these sRNAs have been further implicated in regulating pneumococcal pathogenesis. However, there was little overlap in the sRNAs identified among these studies, which indicated that the approaches used for sRNA identification were not sufficiently sensitive and robust and that there were likely many more undiscovered sRNAs encoded in the S. pneumoniae genome. Here, we sought to comprehensively identify sRNAs in Avery's virulent S. pneumoniae strain D39 using two independent RNA-seq based approaches. We developed an unbiased method for identifying novel sRNAs from bacterial RNA-seq data and have further tested the specificity of our analysis program towards identifying sRNAs encoded by both strains D39 and TIGR4. Interestingly, the genes for 15% of the putative sRNAs identified in strain TIGR4 including ones previously implicated in virulence were not present in strain D39 genome suggesting that the differences in sRNA repertoires between these two serotypes may contribute to their strain-specific virulence properties. Finally, this study has identified 67 new sRNA candidates in strain D39, 28 out of which have been further validated, raising the total number of sRNAs that have been identified in strain D39 to 112.
Project description:Transcriptome comparison of the Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 wild-type grown in M17 medium toD39 wild-type grown in M17 medium + 0.5% sialic acid (SM17).
Project description:This study reports the impact of cadmium toxicity on the transcriptome of S. pneumoniae. The most transcriptionally-responsive pathways were found to be carbon source metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, cellular metal homeostasis and competence. This data provides a global overview of how the pneumococcus responds to metal ion intoxication, and subsequently, how it maintains viability during this stress.
Project description:Transcriptome analysis of D39 rel+Spn and delta-relSpn strains treated with mupirocin revealed relSpn-independent (translation stress), relSpn-dependent (stringent response), and delta-relSpn-dependent changes suggesting that relSpn and (p)ppGpp amount play wide-ranging homeostatic roles in pneumococcal physiology, besides adjusting macromolecular synthesis and transport in response to nutrient availability.