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Frontiers in Microbiology 2021Bacterial persisters are a sub-population of phenotypic variants that tolerate high concentrations of antibiotics within the genetically homogeneous cells. They resume... (Review)
Review
Bacterial persisters are a sub-population of phenotypic variants that tolerate high concentrations of antibiotics within the genetically homogeneous cells. They resume division upon the removal of drugs. Bacterial persistence is one of major causes of antibiotic treatment failure and recurrent infection. Cell dormancy, triggered by toxin/antitoxin pair, (p)ppGpp, SOS response and ATP levels, is known to be the mechanistic basis for persistence. However, recent studies have demonstrated that bacteria with active metabolism can maintain persistence by lowering intracellular antibiotic concentration via an efflux pump. Additionally, others and our work have showed that cell wall deficient bacteria (CWDB), including both L-form and spheroplasts that produced by β-lactam antibiotics, are associated with antibiotic persistence. They are not dormant cells as their cell walls have been completely damaged. In this review, we discuss the various types of persisters and highlight the contribution of non-walled bacteria on bacterial persistence.
PubMed: 35185807
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.708580 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... Jun 2023Large DNA assembly methodologies underlie milestone achievements in synthetic prokaryotic and budding yeast chromosomes. While budding yeast control chromosome...
Large DNA assembly methodologies underlie milestone achievements in synthetic prokaryotic and budding yeast chromosomes. While budding yeast control chromosome inheritance through ~125 bp DNA sequence-defined centromeres, mammals and many other eukaryotes use large, epigenetic centromeres. Harnessing centromere epigenetics permits human artificial chromosome (HAC) formation but is not sufficient to avoid rampant multimerization of the initial DNA molecule upon introduction to cells. Here, we describe an approach that efficiently forms single-copy HACs. It employs a ~750 kb construct that is sufficiently large to house the distinct chromatin types present at the inner and outer centromere, obviating the need to multimerize. Delivery to mammalian cells is streamlined by employing yeast spheroplast fusion. These developments permit faithful chromosome engineering in the context of metazoan cells.
PubMed: 37546784
DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.30.547284 -
Nature Communications May 2023Brown adipose tissue expresses uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), which dissipates energy as heat, making it a target for treating metabolic disorders. Here, we investigate...
Brown adipose tissue expresses uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), which dissipates energy as heat, making it a target for treating metabolic disorders. Here, we investigate how purine nucleotides inhibit respiration uncoupling by UCP1. Our molecular simulations predict that GDP and GTP bind UCP1 in the common substrate binding site in an upright orientation, where the base moiety interacts with conserved residues R92 and E191. We identify a triplet of uncharged residues, F88/I187/W281, forming hydrophobic contacts with nucleotides. In yeast spheroplast respiration assays, both I187A and W281A mutants increase the fatty acid-induced uncoupling activity of UCP1 and partially suppress the inhibition of UCP1 activity by nucleotides. The F88A/I187A/W281A triple mutant is overactivated by fatty acids even at high concentrations of purine nucleotides. In simulations, E191 and W281 interact with purine but not pyrimidine bases. These results provide a molecular understanding of the selective inhibition of UCP1 by purine nucleotides.
Topics: Ion Channels; Uncoupling Protein 1; Membrane Proteins; Mitochondrial Proteins; Fatty Acids; Purine Nucleotides; Adipose Tissue, Brown; Saccharomyces cerevisiae
PubMed: 37147287
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38219-9 -
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Sep 2019Antibiotic tolerance, the ability to temporarily sustain viability in the presence of bactericidal antibiotics, constitutes an understudied and yet potentially...
Antibiotic tolerance, the ability to temporarily sustain viability in the presence of bactericidal antibiotics, constitutes an understudied and yet potentially widespread cause of antibiotic treatment failure. We have previously shown that the Gram-negative pathogen can tolerate exposure to the typically bactericidal β-lactam antibiotics by assuming a spherical morphotype devoid of detectable cell wall material. However, it is unclear how widespread β-lactam tolerance is. Here, we tested a panel of clinically significant Gram-negative pathogens for their response to the potent, broad-spectrum carbapenem antibiotic meropenem. We show that clinical isolates of , , and , but not , exhibited moderate to high levels of tolerance of meropenem, both in laboratory growth medium and in human serum. Importantly, tolerance was mediated by cell wall-deficient spheroplasts, which readily recovered wild-type morphology and growth upon removal of antibiotic. Our results suggest that carbapenem tolerance is prevalent in clinically significant bacterial species, and we suggest that this could contribute to treatment failure associated with these organisms.
Topics: Amdinocillin; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Drug Tolerance; Enterobacter aerogenes; Enterobacter cloacae; Escherichia coli; Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections; Klebsiella pneumoniae; Meropenem; Microbial Sensitivity Tests; Spheroplasts
PubMed: 31285232
DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00756-19 -
Viruses Apr 2021Sindbis virus (SINV), a positive-sense single stranded RNA virus that causes mild symptoms in humans, is transmitted by mosquito bites. SINV reverse genetics have many...
Sindbis virus (SINV), a positive-sense single stranded RNA virus that causes mild symptoms in humans, is transmitted by mosquito bites. SINV reverse genetics have many implications, not only in understanding alphavirus transmission, replication cycle, and virus-host interactions, but also in biotechnology and biomedical applications. The rescue of SINV infectious particles is usually achieved by transfecting susceptible cells (BHK-21) with SINV-infectious mRNA genomes generated from cDNA constructed via in vitro translation (IVT). That procedure is time consuming, costly, and relies heavily on reagent quality. Here, we constructed a novel infectious SINV cDNA construct that expresses its genomic RNA in yeast cells controlled by galactose induction. Using spheroplasts made from this yeast, we established a robust polyethylene glycol-mediated yeast: BHK-21 fusion protocol to rescue infectious SINV particles. Our approach is timesaving and utilizes common lab reagents for SINV rescue. It could be a useful tool for the rescue of large single strand RNA viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2.
Topics: Alphavirus Infections; Animals; COVID-19; Cell Fusion; DNA, Complementary; Host Microbial Interactions; RNA, Viral; SARS-CoV-2; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Sindbis Virus; Spheroplasts; Yeasts
PubMed: 33916100
DOI: 10.3390/v13040603 -
Scientific Reports Feb 2024Antimicrobial resistance has emerged as one of the leading public health threats of the twenty-first century. Gram-negative pathogens have been a major contributor to...
Antimicrobial resistance has emerged as one of the leading public health threats of the twenty-first century. Gram-negative pathogens have been a major contributor to the declining efficacy of antibiotics through both acquired resistance and tolerance. In this study, a pan-drug resistant (PDR), NDM-1 and CTX-M-15 co-producing isolate of K. pneumoniae, CDC Nevada, (Kp Nevada) was exposed to the clinical combination of aztreonam + ceftazidime/avibactam (ATM/CAZ/AVI) to overcome metallo-β-lactamases. Unexpectedly, the β-lactam combination resulted in long filamentous cell formation induced by PBP3 inhibition over 168 h in the hollow fiber infection model experiments with eventual reversion of the total population upon drug removal. However, the addition of imipenem to the two drug β-lactam combination was highly synergistic with suppression of all drug resistant subpopulations over 5 days. Scanning electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy for all imipenem combinations in time kill studies suggested a role for imipenem in suppression of long filamentous persisters, via the formation of metabolically active spheroplasts. To complement the imaging studies, salient transcriptomic changes were quantified using RT-PCR and novel cassette assay evaluated β-lactam permeability. This showed significant upregulation of both spheroplast protein Y (SPY), a periplasmic chaperone protein that has been shown to be related to spheroplast formation, and penicillin binding proteins (PBP1, PBP2, PBP3) for all combinations involving imipenem. However, with aztreonam alone, pbp1, pbp3 and spy remained unchanged while pbp2 levels were downregulated by > 25%. Imipenem displayed 207-fold higher permeability as compared with aztreonam (mean permeability coefficient of 17,200 nm/s). Although the clinical combination of aztreonam/avibactam and ceftazidime has been proposed as an important treatment of MBL Gram-negatives, we report the first occurrence of long filamentous persister formation. To our knowledge, this is the first study that defines novel β-lactam combinations involving imipenem via maximal suppression of filamentous persisters to combat PDR CDC Nevada K. pneumoniae.
Topics: Ceftazidime; Klebsiella pneumoniae; Aztreonam; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Imipenem; beta-Lactamases; Drug Combinations; Microbial Sensitivity Tests; Azabicyclo Compounds
PubMed: 38326428
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53130-z -
Nature Communications Oct 2022Squalene-hopene cyclases are a highly valuable and attractive class of membrane-bound enzymes as sustainable biotechnological tools to produce aromas and bioactive...
Squalene-hopene cyclases are a highly valuable and attractive class of membrane-bound enzymes as sustainable biotechnological tools to produce aromas and bioactive compounds at industrial scale. However, their application as whole-cell biocatalysts suffer from the outer cell membrane acting as a diffusion barrier for the highly hydrophobic substrate/product, while the use of purified enzymes leads to dramatic loss of stability. Here we present an unexplored strategy for biocatalysis: the application of squalene-hopene-cyclase spheroplasts. By removing the outer cell membrane, we produce stable and substrate-accessible biocatalysts. These spheroplasts exhibit up to 100-fold higher activity than their whole-cell counterparts for the biotransformations of squalene, geranyl acetone, farnesol, and farnesyl acetone. Their catalytic ability is also higher than the purified enzyme for all high molecular weight terpenes. In addition, we introduce a concept for the carrier-free immobilization of spheroplasts via crosslinking, crosslinked spheroplasts. The crosslinked spheroplasts maintain the same catalytic activity of the spheroplasts, offering additional advantages such as recycling and reuse. These timely solutions contribute not only to harness the catalytic potential of the squalene-hopene cyclases, but also to make biocatalytic processes even greener and more cost-efficient.
Topics: Spheroplasts; Squalene; Farnesol; Acetone; Intramolecular Transferases; Terpenes
PubMed: 36271006
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34030-0 -
MBio Jun 2022β-Lactam antibiotics exploit the essentiality of the bacterial cell envelope by perturbing the peptidoglycan layer, typically resulting in rapid lysis and death. Many...
β-Lactam antibiotics exploit the essentiality of the bacterial cell envelope by perturbing the peptidoglycan layer, typically resulting in rapid lysis and death. Many Gram-negative bacteria do not lyse but instead exhibit "tolerance," the ability to sustain viability in the presence of bactericidal antibiotics for extended periods. Antibiotic tolerance has been implicated in treatment failure and is a stepping-stone in the acquisition of true resistance, and the molecular factors that promote intrinsic tolerance are not well understood. Acinetobacter baumannii is a critical-threat nosocomial pathogen notorious for its ability to rapidly develop multidrug resistance. Carbapenem β-lactam antibiotics (i.e., meropenem) are first-line prescriptions to treat A. baumannii infections, but treatment failure is increasingly prevalent. Meropenem tolerance in Gram-negative pathogens is characterized by morphologically distinct populations of spheroplasts, but the impact of spheroplast formation is not fully understood. Here, we show that susceptible A. baumannii clinical isolates demonstrate tolerance to high-level meropenem treatment, form spheroplasts upon exposure to the antibiotic, and revert to normal growth after antibiotic removal. Using transcriptomics and genetic screens, we show that several genes associated with outer membrane integrity maintenance and efflux promote tolerance, likely by limiting entry into the periplasm. Genes associated with peptidoglycan homeostasis in the periplasm and cytoplasm also answered our screen, and their disruption compromised cell envelope barrier function. Finally, we defined the enzymatic activity of the tolerance determinants penicillin-binding protein 7 (PBP7) and ElsL (a cytoplasmic ld-carboxypeptidase). These data show that outer membrane integrity and peptidoglycan recycling are tightly linked in their contribution to A. baumannii meropenem tolerance. Carbapenem treatment failure associated with "superbug" infections has rapidly increased in prevalence, highlighting the urgent need to develop new therapeutic strategies. Antibiotic tolerance can directly lead to treatment failure but has also been shown to promote the acquisition of true resistance within a population. While some studies have addressed mechanisms that promote tolerance, factors that underlie Gram-negative bacterial survival during carbapenem treatment are not well understood. Here, we characterized the role of peptidoglycan recycling in outer membrane integrity maintenance and meropenem tolerance in A. baumannii. These studies suggest that the pathogen limits antibiotic concentrations in the periplasm and highlight physiological processes that could be targeted to improve antimicrobial treatment.
Topics: Acinetobacter baumannii; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Carbapenems; Gram-Negative Bacteria; Meropenem; Microbial Sensitivity Tests; Peptidoglycan
PubMed: 35638738
DOI: 10.1128/mbio.01001-22 -
International Journal of Molecular... Sep 2020Cell enlargement is essential for the microinjection of various substances into bacterial cells. The cell wall (peptidoglycan) inhibits cell enlargement. Thus, bacterial... (Review)
Review
Cell enlargement is essential for the microinjection of various substances into bacterial cells. The cell wall (peptidoglycan) inhibits cell enlargement. Thus, bacterial protoplasts/spheroplasts are used for enlargement because they lack cell wall. Though bacterial species that are capable of gene manipulation are limited, procedure for bacterial cell enlargement does not involve any gene manipulation technique. In order to prevent cell wall resynthesis during enlargement of protoplasts/spheroplasts, incubation media are supplemented with inhibitors of peptidoglycan biosynthesis such as penicillin. Moreover, metal ion composition in the incubation medium affects the properties of the plasma membrane. Therefore, in order to generate enlarged cells that are suitable for microinjection, metal ion composition in the medium should be considered. Experiment of bacterial protoplast or spheroplast enlargement is useful for studies on bacterial plasma membrane biosynthesis. In this paper, we have summarized the factors that influence bacterial cell enlargement.
Topics: Bacteria; Cell Enlargement; Cell Membrane; Cell Wall; Culture Media; Ions; Metals; Osmotic Pressure; Penicillins; Peptidoglycan; Protein Biosynthesis; Protoplasts; Spheroplasts
PubMed: 32992574
DOI: 10.3390/ijms21197131 -
Veterinary World Jun 2020is a dimorphic fungus that has both yeast and filamentous forms. It is part of the normal flora in the oral and genital areas of mammals. One factor for the...
BACKGROUND AND AIM
is a dimorphic fungus that has both yeast and filamentous forms. It is part of the normal flora in the oral and genital areas of mammals. One factor for the pathogenicity of is its ability to switch from yeast to hyphae. The hyphal form adheres and penetrates tissues more readily than the yeast form and produces biofilms that are associated with chronic infection. Biofilms are protective niches that enable microorganisms to be more resistant to antibiotic treatment, thus allowing for persistent infection. The first stage in the transition from yeast to hyphae involves the formation of a germ tube, and this transition is triggered by interactions with host cells. Germ tube formation is dependent on serum, pH, temperature, and quorum-sensing molecules (QSMs). Farnesol, which is a QSM in , can prevent yeast to hyphae conversion and inhibits the growth of fungal biofilm. Lyticase is a synergistic enzyme complex that catalyzes yeast cell lysis by b-1,3-glucanase and is a highly specific alkaline protease that produces protoplasts or spheroplasts. This study investigated the effect of farnesol and lyticase on the formation of biofilms.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
ATCC 2091 was cultivated on liquid and solid Sabouraud media. The presence of was confirmed using HiCrome Candida Agar chromogenic medium. Enzyme activities were assayed using a HiCandida Identification Kit. The morphology and densitometry parameters of biofilms were considered in the presence of farnesol (Sigma-Aldrich, Germany), lyticase (from ; Sigma-Aldrich, Germany), and farnesol-lyticase.
RESULTS
This study shows that both farnesol and lyticase possess antifungal activity against biofilms. A significant difference among treatment groups (p<0.05) was observed from strong biofilm production to medium and weak.
CONCLUSION
Many studies have been devoted to the antimicrobial action of farnesol. Bacterial enzyme lyticase is also used to degrade fungal cell walls. Both molecules show substantial antifungal properties that are similar to the properties of modern antimycotics. The current study demonstrates that farnesol and lyticase can disrupt biofilm formation in ATCC 2091, which is an effective biofilm producer.
PubMed: 32801551
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2020.1030-1036