A Functional Phenylacetic Acid Catabolic Pathway Is Required for Full Pathogenicity of Burkholderia cenocepacia in the Caenorhabditis elegans Host Model
- 1 November 2008
- journal article
- Published by American Society for Microbiology in Journal of Bacteriology
- Vol. 190 (21), 7209-7218
- https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.00481-08
Abstract
Burkholderia cenocepacia is a member of the Burkholderia cepacia complex, a group of metabolically versatile bacteria that have emerged as opportunistic pathogens in cystic fibrosis and immunocompromised patients. Previously a screen of transposon mutants in a rat pulmonary infection model identified an attenuated mutant with an insertion in paaE , a gene related to the phenylacetic acid (PA) catabolic pathway. In this study, we characterized gene clusters involved in the PA degradation pathway of B. cenocepacia K56-2 in relation to its pathogenicity in the Caenorhabditis elegans model of infection. We demonstrated that targeted-insertion mutagenesis of paaA and paaE , which encode part of the putative PA-coenzyme A (CoA) ring hydroxylation system, paaZ , coding for a putative ring opening enzyme, and paaF , encoding part of the putative beta-oxidation system, severely reduces growth on PA as a sole carbon source. paaA and paaE insertional mutants were attenuated for virulence, and expression of paaE in trans restored pathogenicity of the paaE mutant to wild-type levels. Interruption of paaZ and paaF slightly increased virulence. Using gene interference by ingested double-stranded RNA, we showed that the attenuated phenotype of the paaA and paaE mutants is dependent on a functional p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway in C. elegans . Taken together, our results demonstrate that B. cenocepacia possesses a functional PA degradation pathway and that the putative PA-CoA ring hydroxylation system is required for full pathogenicity in C. elegans .Keywords
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