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Updated: Jan 27, 2026

Establishment of a High-throughput Setup for Screening Small Molecules That Modulate c-di-GMP Signaling in Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Published on: June 30, 2016
A feed-forward signalling circuit controls bacterial virulence through linking cyclic di-GMP and two mechanistically
Xiaochen Yuan1,2, Quan Zeng3, Devanshi Khokhani2
1Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Food Quality and Safety-State Key Laboratory Cultivation Base of Ministry of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210014, China.
Abstract:
Dickeya dadantii is a plant pathogen that causes soft rot disease on vegetable and potato crops. To successfully cause infection, this pathogen needs to coordinately modulate the expression of genes encoding several virulence determinants, including plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs), type III secretion system (T3SS) and flagellar motility. Here, we uncover a novel feed-forward signalling circuit for controlling virulence. Global RNA chaperone Hfq interacts with an Hfq-dependent sRNA ArcZ and represses the translation of pecT, encoding a LysR-type transcriptional regulator. We demonstrate that the ability of ArcZ to be processed to a 50 nt 3'- end fragment is essential for its regulation of pecT. PecT down-regulates PCWDE and the T3SS by repressing the expression of a global post-transcriptional regulator- (RsmA-) associated sRNA encoding gene rsmB. In addition, we show that the protein levels of two cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) diguanylate cyclases (DGCs), GcpA and GcpL, are repressed by Hfq. Further studies show that both DGCs are essential for the Hfq-mediated post-transcriptional regulation on RsmB. Overall, our report provides new insights into the interplays between ubiquitous signalling transduction systems that were most studied independently and sheds light on multitiered regulatory mechanisms for a precise disease regulation in bacteria.
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