YebC controls virulence by activating T3SS gene expression in the pathogen Edwardsiella piscicida

Edwardsiella piscicida is an infectious Gram-negative bacterium that causes great losses to the aquaculture industry worldwide. Based on pattern analysis of conditional essentiality (PACE), a new method for transposon insertion sequencing (Tn-seq) data analysis, we investigated the genome-wide genetic requirements during the dynamic process of infection and colonization in turbot in this study. As a result, disruption of ETAE_1437 was discovered to lead to substantially reduced colonization, which was similar to the in vivo dynamic patterns of the mutants of T3SS or T6SS. Bioinformatics analysis indicated that ETAE_1437 is a YebC/PmpR family regulator. Moreover, we found that ETAE_1437 not only regulated quorum sensing by directly binding to the edwR promoter region but also activated T3SS expression by directly binding to the promoter region of the T3SS gene ETAE_0873. In addition, ETAE_1437 mutants exhibited substantial colonization defects and significantly decreased virulence in turbot. Overall, this study identified ETAE_1437 as a novel virulence regulator in E. piscicida and enriched our understanding of the pathogenesis of E. piscicida in fish. We thus reannotated ETAE_1437 as YebC.