Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons^™

Pathogenic Adaptation Of Intracellular Bacteria By Rewiring A Cis-Regulatory Input Function, Suzanne E. Osborne, Don Walthers, Ana M. Tomljenovic, David T. Mulder, Uma Silphaduang, Nancy Duong, Michael J. Lowden

Dartmouth Scholarship

The acquisition of DNA by horizontal gene transfer enables bacteria to adapt to previously unexploited ecological niches. Although horizontal gene transfer and mutation of protein-coding sequences are well-recognized forms of pathogen evolution, the evolutionary significance of cis-regulatory mutations in creating phenotypic diversity through altered transcriptional outputs is not known. We show the significance of regulatory mutation for pathogen evolution by mapping and then rewiring a cis-regulatory module controlling a gene required for murine typhoid. Acquisition of a binding site for the Salmonella pathogenicity island-2 regulator, SsrB, enabled the srfN gene, ancestral to the Salmonella genus, to play a …