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Regulation of Thermostable Direct Hemolysin and Biofilm Formation of Vibrio parahaemolyticus by Quorum-Sensing Genes luxM and luxS

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Abstract

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a seafood opportunistic pathogen. There are evidences suggesting that virulence skills, including hemolytic activity and biofilm formation, are regulated by the luxM/luxS-dependent quorum-sensing system in V. parahaemolyticus, and their regulatory mechanism is not well understood. To better understand the virulence regulatory mechanism of V. parahaemolyticus, the luxM deletion (△luxM) and luxS deletion (△luxS) mutants were constructed and their impacts on growth, hemolysin activity, and biofilm were investigated. Results show that both luxM and luxS are involved in the adaptation to environmental conditions in early adaptive-log phase growth of V. parahaemolyticus. Thermostable direct hemolysin gene (tdh) was negatively regulated by luxM and positively regulated by luxS. The biofilm formation was negatively regulated by both luxS and luxM. This study provides an insight into some aspects of V. parahaemolyticus virulence regulation by luxM/luxS-dependent quorum-sensing system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31371746) and the higher educational cultivation program for major scientific research projects of Guangdong Ocean University (Nos. GDOU2013050205, 2014050203) and the scientific research program of administration of quality and technology supervision of Guangdong province (No. 2015ZZ02).

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  1. Muhan Guo and Zhijia Fang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Food Science and Technology, Guangdong Ocean University, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Aquatic Product Processing and Safety, Guangdong Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center of Marine Food, Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing of Aquatic Products of Guangdong Higher Education Institution, Zhanjiang, 524088, China

    Muhan Guo, Zhijia Fang, Lijun Sun, Dongfang Sun, Yaling Wang, Can Li, Rundong Wang, Hanqiao Hu, Ying Liu & Defeng Xu

  2. National Marine Products Quality Supervision & Inspection Center, Zhanjiang, 524000, China

    Yang Liu

  3. Department of Wine, Food and Molecular Biosciences, Lincoln University, Lincoln, 7647, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Ravi Gooneratne

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  1. Muhan Guo
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Guo, M., Fang, Z., Sun, L. et al. Regulation of Thermostable Direct Hemolysin and Biofilm Formation of Vibrio parahaemolyticus by Quorum-Sensing Genes luxM and luxS. Curr Microbiol 75, 1190–1197 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-018-1508-y

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