University of Leicester
Browse
Clostridioides difficile LuxS mediates inter-bacterial interactions within biofilms.pdf (2.8 MB)

Clostridioides difficile LuxS mediates inter-bacterial interactions within biofilms.

Download (2.8 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2019-07-31, 09:28 authored by Ross T. Slater, Lucy R. Frost, Sian E. Jossi, Andrew D. Millard, Meera Unnikrishnan
The anaerobic gut pathogen, Clostridioides difficile, forms adherent biofilms that may play an important role in recurrent C. difficile infections. The mechanisms underlying C. difficile community formation and inter-bacterial interactions are nevertheless poorly understood. C. difficile produces AI-2, a quorum sensing molecule that modulates biofilm formation across many bacterial species. We found that a strain defective in LuxS, the enzyme that mediates AI-2 production, is defective in biofilm development in vitro. Transcriptomic analyses of biofilms formed by wild type (WT) and luxS mutant (luxS) strains revealed a downregulation of prophage loci in the luxS mutant biofilms compared to the WT. Detection of phages and eDNA within biofilms may suggest that DNA release by phage-mediated cell lysis contributes to C. difficile biofilm formation. In order to understand if LuxS mediates C. difficile crosstalk with other gut species, C. difficile interactions with a common gut bacterium, Bacteroides fragilis, were studied. We demonstrate that C. difficile growth is significantly reduced when co-cultured with B. fragilis in mixed biofilms. Interestingly, the absence of C. difficile LuxS alleviates the B. fragilis-mediated growth inhibition. Dual species RNA-sequencing analyses from single and mixed biofilms revealed differential modulation of distinct metabolic pathways for C. difficile WT, luxS and B. fragilis upon co-culture, indicating that AI-2 may be involved in induction of selective metabolic responses in B. fragilis. Overall, our data suggest that C. difficile LuxS/AI-2 utilises different mechanisms to mediate formation of single and mixed species communities.

Funding

We thank Gianfranco Donelli, and Claudia Vuotto, Microbial Biofilm Laboratory, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Italy for providing the Bacteroides fragilis isolate and Prof Paul Williams, University of Nottingham for providing the Vibrio harveyi strain BB170. This was in part supported by a Seed grant from the Wellcome Warwick Quantitative Biomedicine Programme (Institutional Strategic Support Fund: 105627/Z/14/Z). We thank the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded Midland Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP) studentships to LF and SR.

History

Citation

Scientific Reports, 2019, volume 9, Article number: 9903

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF LIFE SCIENCES/School of Medicine/Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Scientific Reports

Publisher

Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)

eissn

2045-2322

Acceptance date

2019-06-21

Copyright date

2019

Available date

2019-07-31

Publisher version

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46143-6

Notes

Supplementary information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46143-6

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    Keywords

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC