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Two flagellar stators and their roles in motility and virulence in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci 6605

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Abstract

The motor proteins around the flagellar basal body consist of two cytoplasmic membrane proteins, MotA and MotB, and function as a complex that acts as the stator to generate the torque that drives rotation. Genome analysis of several Pseudomonas syringae pathovars revealed that there are two sets of genes encoding motor proteins: motAB and motCD. Deduced amino acid sequences for MotA/B and MotC/D showed homologies to the H+-driven stator from Escherichia coli and Na+-driven stator from Vibrio alginolyticus, respectively. However, the swimming motility of P. syringae pv. tabaci (Pta) 6605 was inhibited by the protonophore carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone but not by the sodium stator-specific inhibitor phenamil. To identify a gene encoding the stator protein required for motility, ∆motAB, ∆motCD, and ∆motABCD mutants were generated. The ∆motCD mutant had remarkably reduced and the ∆motABCD mutant completely abolished swimming motilities, whereas the ∆motAB mutant retained some degree of these abilities. The ∆motCD and ∆motABCD mutants did not produce N-acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs), quorum-sensing molecules in this pathogen, and remarkably reduced the ability to cause disease in host tobacco leaves, as we previously observed in the ∆fliC mutant strain. These results strongly indicate that both stator pairs in Pta 6605 are proton-dependent and that MotCD is important for not only flagellar motility but also for production of AHLs and the ability to cause disease in host plants.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Leaf Tobacco Research Laboratory of Japan Tobacco Inc. for providing Pta 6605. We are also grateful to Dr. P. Williams (Nottingham University, UK) and Dr. T. Ikeda (Utsunomiya University, Japan) for providing Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 and the chemically synthesized AHLs, respectively. This work was supported in part by the Program for Promotion of Basic Research Activities for Innovative Bioscience (PROBRAIN).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, 1-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan

    Eiko Kanda, Takafumi Tatsuta, Tomoko Suzuki, Fumiko Taguchi, Kana Naito, Yoshishige Inagaki, Kazuhiro Toyoda, Tomonori Shiraishi & Yuki Ichinose

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  1. Eiko Kanda
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  2. Takafumi Tatsuta
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  3. Tomoko Suzuki
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  4. Fumiko Taguchi
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  5. Kana Naito
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  6. Yoshishige Inagaki
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  7. Kazuhiro Toyoda
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  8. Tomonori Shiraishi
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  9. Yuki Ichinose
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuki Ichinose.

Additional information

Communicated by G. Klug.

Nucleotide sequence accession numbers: The nucleotide sequences of motAB and motCD with surrounding regions have been deposited in the DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank nucleotide sequence databases under the accession number AB511948 for cheY2, cheZ, cheA2, cheB3, motC, and motD and AB511949 for motA and motB.

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Kanda, E., Tatsuta, T., Suzuki, T. et al. Two flagellar stators and their roles in motility and virulence in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci 6605. Mol Genet Genomics 285, 163–174 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-010-0594-8

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