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Author Spotlight: Advancing Therapeutics to Treat Vibriosis in Humans and Aquatic Organisms
Published on: May 31, 2024
Quorum sensing autoinducers AHLs protect Shewanella baltica against phage infection
Guanhua Xuan1, Lin Tan1, Yuqing Yang2
1Food Safety Laboratory, College of Food Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China.
Abstract:
Quorum sensing (QS) plays an important role in phage-host interactions. Shewanella baltica can't produce the N-acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) signal molecules but can eavesdrop on exogenous AHLs through its LuxR receptor. However, no clear evidence exists regarding the involvement of AHLs-mediated QS systems in S. baltica in regulating phage infection. Here, we report that AHLs modulated the phage resistance of S. baltica OS155. Specifically, we characterized a S. baltica phage vB_Sb_QDWS and preliminarily identified that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is an important receptor for phage vB_Sb_QDWS. AHLs could protect S. baltica against phage infection by decreasing LPS-mediated phage adsorption. The expression of genes galU and tkt, which are essential for LPS synthesis, down-regulated significantly in response to AHLs autoinducers. Our finding confirms the important roles of QS in virus-host interactions and would be helpful to develop novel phage strategies for food spoilage control.
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