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Medicine and Health Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2012

Dartmouth Scholarship

Bacteriology

Mutation

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Minor Pilins Of The Type Iv Pilus System Participate In The Negative Regulation Of Swarming Motility, S L. Kuchma, E. F. Griffin, G. A. O'Toole Aug 2012

Minor Pilins Of The Type Iv Pilus System Participate In The Negative Regulation Of Swarming Motility, S L. Kuchma, E. F. Griffin, G. A. O'Toole

Dartmouth Scholarship

Pseudomonas aeruginosa exhibits distinct surface-associated behaviors, including biofilm formation, flagellum-mediated swarming motility, and type IV pilus-driven twitching. Here, we report a role for the minor pilins, PilW and PilX, components of the type IV pilus assembly machinery, in the repression of swarming motility. Mutating either the pilW or pilX gene alleviates the inhibition of swarming motility observed for strains with elevated levels of the intracellular signaling molecule cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) due to loss of BifA, a c-di-GMP-degrading phosphodiesterase. Blocking PilD peptidase-mediated processing of PilW and PilX renders the unprocessed proteins defective for pilus assembly but still functional in c-di-GMP-mediated swarming …


Epoxide-Mediated Cifr Repression Of Cif Gene Expression Utilizes Two Binding Sites In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Alicia E. Ballok, Christopher D. Bahl, Emily L. Dolben, Allia K. Lindsay, Jessica D. St. Laurent, Deborah Hogan, Dean Madden, George A. O'Toole Jul 2012

Epoxide-Mediated Cifr Repression Of Cif Gene Expression Utilizes Two Binding Sites In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Alicia E. Ballok, Christopher D. Bahl, Emily L. Dolben, Allia K. Lindsay, Jessica D. St. Laurent, Deborah Hogan, Dean Madden, George A. O'Toole

Dartmouth Scholarship

Pseudomonas aeruginosa secretes an epoxide hydrolase virulence factor that reduces the apical membrane expression of ABC transporters such as the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). This virulence factor, named CFTR inhibitory factor (Cif), is regulated by a TetR-family, epoxide-responsive repressor known as CifR via direct binding and repression. We identified two sites of CifR binding in the intergenic space between cifR and morB, the first gene in the operon containing the cif gene. We have mapped these binding sites and found they are 27 bp in length, and they overlap the -10 and +1 sites of both the cifR …