Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:2.3.1.184 (LasR)
 897 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Genetically accessible host models are useful for studying microbial pathogenesis because they offer the means to identify novel strategies that pathogens use to evade immune mechanisms, cause cellular injury, and induce disease. We have developed conditions under which the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa infects Dictyostelium discoideum, a genetically tractable eukaryotic organism. When D. discoideum is plated on nutrient agar plates with different P. aeruginosa strains, the bacteria form lawns on these plates with amoebae embedded in them. Virulent P. aeruginosa strains kill these amoebae and leave an intact bacterial lawn. A number of P. aeruginosa mutants have been identified that are avirulent in this assay. Amoebae feed on these bacteria and form plaques in their bacterial lawns. One avirulent mutant strain carries an insertional mutation in the lasR gene. LasR is a transcription factor that controls a number of virulence genes in a density-dependent fashion. Another class of avirulent P. aeruginosa mutants is defective in type III secretion. One mutant lacks the PscJ protein, a structural component of the secretion apparatus, suggesting that cytotoxins are injected into the D. discoideum cell. One of these cytotoxins is ExoU, and exoU mutants are avirulent toward D. discoideum. Complementation of the lasR and exoU mutations restores virulence. Therefore, P. aeruginosa uses conserved virulence pathways to kill D. discoideum.
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PMID:The human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa utilizes conserved virulence pathways to infect the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. 1186 44

Legionella pneumophila is an opportunistic human pathogen that replicates within environmental amoebae including Acanthamoeba castellanii and Dictyostelium discoideum. The Icm/Dot type IV secretion system promotes phagocytosis and intracellular replication of L. pneumophila in an endoplasmic reticulum-derived 'Legionella-containing vacuole' (LCV). L. pneumophila adopts a biphasic life cycle consisting of a replicative growth phase and a transmissive (stationary) phase, the latter of which is characterized by the preferential expression of genes required for motility and virulence. A bioinformatic analysis of the L. pneumophila genome revealed a gene cluster homologous to the Vibrio cholerae cqsAS genes, encoding a putative quorum sensing autoinducer synthase (lqsA) and a sensor kinase (lqsS), which flank a novel response regulator (lqsR). We report here that an L. pneumophila lqsR deletion mutant grew in broth with the same rate as wild-type bacteria, but entered the replicative growth phase earlier. Overexpression of lqsR led to an elongated morphology of the bacteria. The lqsR mutant strain was found to be more salt-resistant and impaired for intracellular growth in A. castellanii, D. discoideum and macrophages, formation of the ER-derived LCV and toxicity. Moreover, L. pneumophila lacking LqsR, as well as strains lacking the stationary sigma factor RpoS or the two-component response regulator LetA, were phagocytosed less efficiently by A. castellanii, D. discoideum or macrophages. The expression of lqsR was dependent on RpoS and, to a lesser extent, also on LetA. DNA microarray experiments revealed that lqsR regulates the expression of genes involved in virulence, motility and cell division, consistent with a role for LqsR in the transition from the replicative to the transmissive (virulent) phase. Our findings indicate that LqsR is a novel pleiotropic regulator involved in RpoS- and LetA-controlled interactions of L. pneumophila with phagocytes.
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PMID:The Legionella pneumophila response regulator LqsR promotes host cell interactions as an element of the virulence regulatory network controlled by RpoS and LetA. 1761 67