1. The Cell Wall-Targeting Antibiotic Stimulon of Enterococcus faecalis
- Author
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Pamella Tijerina, Jacqueline Abranches, José A. Lemos, Anthony O. Gaca, Jessica K. Kajfasz, and Alejandro Avilés-Reyes
- Subjects
Bacterial Diseases ,Nosocomial Infections ,Gene Expression ,lcsh:Medicine ,Transcriptome ,Cell Wall ,Microbial Physiology ,Gene expression ,Enterococcus faecalis ,lcsh:Science ,Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis ,0303 health sciences ,Multidisciplinary ,Virulence ,biology ,Phenotype ,Bacterial Pathogens ,Anti-Bacterial Agents ,Up-Regulation ,3. Good health ,Lepidoptera ,Infectious Diseases ,Medical Microbiology ,Medicine ,Research Article ,medicine.drug ,Multidrug tolerance ,Mechanisms of Resistance and Susceptibility ,Microbial Sensitivity Tests ,Bacitracin ,Microbiology ,Molecular Genetics ,03 medical and health sciences ,Virology ,Genetics ,medicine ,Animals ,Biology ,Microbial Pathogens ,Gene ,030304 developmental biology ,030306 microbiology ,lcsh:R ,Computational Biology ,Bacteriology ,Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial ,biochemical phenomena, metabolism, and nutrition ,biology.organism_classification ,Kinetics ,Genetic Loci ,Mutation ,lcsh:Q - Abstract
Enterococcus faecalis is an opportunistic nosocomial pathogen that is highly resistant to a variety of environmental insults, including an intrinsic tolerance to antimicrobials that target the cell wall (CW). With the goal of determining the CW-stress stimulon of E. faecalis, the global transcriptional profile of E. faecalis OG1RF exposed to ampicillin, bacitracin, cephalotin or vancomycin was obtained via microarrays. Exposure to the β-lactams ampicillin and cephalotin resulted in the fewest transcriptional changes with 50 and 192 genes differentially expressed 60 min after treatment, respectively. On the other hand, treatment with bacitracin or vancomycin for 60 min affected the expression of, respectively, 377 and 297 genes. Despite the differences in the total number of genes affected, all antibiotics induced a very similar gene expression pattern with an overrepresentation of genes encoding hypothetical proteins, followed by genes encoding proteins associated with cell envelope metabolism as well as transport and binding proteins. In particular, all drug treatments, most notably bacitracin and vancomycin, resulted in an apparent metabolic downshift based on the repression of genes involved in translation, energy metabolism, transport and binding. Only 19 genes were up-regulated by all conditions at both the 30 and 60 min time points. Among those 19 genes, 4 genes encoding hypothetical proteins (EF0026, EF0797, EF1533 and EF3245) were inactivated and the respective mutant strains characterized in relation to antibiotic tolerance and virulence in the Galleria mellonella model. The phenotypes obtained for two of these mutants, ΔEF1533 and ΔEF3245, support further characterization of these genes as potential candidates for the development of novel preventive or therapeutic approaches.
- Published
- 2013
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