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The RNA chaperone Hfq is important for the virulence, motility and stress tolerance in the phytopathogen Xanthomonas campestris
Author(s) -
Lai JieLing,
Tang DongJie,
Liang YuWei,
Zhang Ren,
Chen Qi,
Qin ZhenPing,
Ming ZhenHua,
Tang JiLiang
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
environmental microbiology reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.229
H-Index - 69
ISSN - 1758-2229
DOI - 10.1111/1758-2229.12657
Subject(s) - virulence , biology , xanthomonas campestris , microbiology and biotechnology , xanthomonas , genetics , bacteria , gene
Summary The RNA chaperone, Hfq, is known to play extensive roles in bacterial growth and development. More recently, it has been shown to be required for virulence in many human and animal bacterial pathogens. Despite these studies little is known about the role Hfq plays in phytopathogenic bacteria. In this study, we show Hfq is required for full virulence of the crucifer black rot pathogen Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris ( Xcc ). We demonstrate that an Xcc hfq deletion strain is highly attenuated for virulence in Chinese radish and shows a severe defect in the production of virulence factors including extracellular enzymes and extracellular polysaccharide. Furthermore, the Xcc strain lacking Hfq had significantly reduced cell motility and stress tolerance. These findings suggest that Hfq is a key regulator of important aspects of virulence and adaptation of Xcc . Taken together, our findings are suggestive of a regulatory network placing Hfq at the centre of virulence gene expression control in Xcc .