Abstract
Based on an example of Azospirillum brasilense Sp245, it was shown that, in bacteria with mixed flagellation, insertional mutagenesis of one of the copies of the flhB gene, which encodes a component of the flagellar protein export apparatus, may be concurrent with defects in the formation of both a constitutive polar flagellum and inducible lateral flagella. Despite the presence of a second copy of flhB in the plasmid-located gene cluster, which seems necessary for the formation of lateral flagella, the flhB1::Omegon-Km Sp245 mutant completely lost the ability to produce them. The described effect of the inactivation of flhB1 might be explained by the use of FlhBl for the assembly of both types of flagella. Since the open reading frame AZOBR_150176, which is transcribed in the same direction and codes for a hypothetical multisensor hybrid histidine kinase/response regulator, adjoins to the 3’-end of flhB1, the participation of the latter protein in the induction of the lateral flagellar synthesis in response to the increase in the density of the environment was not excluded.
References
Fibach-Paldi, S., Burdman, S., and Okon, Y., Key physiological properties contributing to rhizosphere adaptation and plant growth promotion abilities of Azospirillum brasilense, FEMS Microbiol. Lett., 2012, vol. 326, no. 2, pp. 99–108.
Hall, P.G. and Krieg, N.R., Swarming of Azospirillum brasilense on solid media, Can. J. Microbiol., 1983, vol. 29, no. 11, pp. 1592–1594.
Moens, S., Schloter, M., and Vanderleyden, J., Expression of the structural gene, laf1, encoding the flagellin of the lateral flagella in Azospirillum brasilense Sp7, J. Bacteriol., 1996, vol. 178, no. 16, pp. 5017–5019.
Katsy, E.I., Molecular and genetic analysis of associative interrelations between bacteria and plants, Molekulyarnye osnovy vzaimootnoshenii assotsiativnykh mikro-organizmov s rasteniyami (Molecular Bases of Associative Interrelations between Bacteria and Plants), Ignatov, V.V., Ed., Moscow: Nauka, 2005, pp. 17–45.
Soutourina, O.A. and Bertin, P.N., Regulation cascade of flagellar expression in gram-negative bacteria, FEMS Microbiol. Rev., 2003, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 505–523.
Gode-Potratz, C.J., Kustusch, R.J., Breheny, P.J., et al., Surface sensing in Vibrio parahaemolyticus triggers a program of gene expression that promotes colonization and virulence, Mol. Microbiol., 2011, vol. 79, no. 1, pp. 240–263.
Scheludko, A.V., Katsy, E.I., Ostudin, N.A., et al., Novel classes of Azospirillum brasilense mutants with defects in the assembly and functioning of polar and lateral flagella, Mol. Genet. Mikrobiol. Virusol., 1998, no. 4, pp. 33–37.
Jiang, Z.-Y., Rushing, B.G., Bai, Y., et al., Isolation of Rhodospirillum centenum mutants defective in phototactic colony motility by transposon mutagenesis, J. Bacteriol., 1998, vol. 180, no. 5, pp. 1248–1255.
Lu, Y.-K., Marden, J., Han, M., et al., Metabolic flexibility revealed in the genome of the cyst-forming α-1 proteobacterium roteobacterium Rhodospirillum centenum, BMC Genomics, 2010, vol. 11, p. 325.
Wisniewski-Dy, F., Borziak, K., Khalsa-Moyers, G., et al., Azospirillum genomes reveal transition of bacteria from aquatic to terrestrial environments, PLoS Genet., 2011, vol. 7, no. 12, p. e1002430.
Baldani, V.L.D., Baldani, J.I., and Döbereiner, J., Effects of Azospirillum inoculation on root infection and nitrogen incorporation in wheat, Can. J. Microbiol., 1983, vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 924–929.
Fellay, R., Krisch, H.M., Prentki, P., and Frey, J., Omegon-Km: A transposable element designed for in vivo insertional mutagenesis and cloning of genes in gram-negative bacteria, Gene, 1989, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 215–226.
Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T., Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Lab., 1989, 2nd ed.
Katzy, E.I., Matora, L.Yu., Serebrennikova, O.B., and Scheludko, A.V., Involvement of a 120-MDa plasmid of Azospirillum brasilense Sp245 in production of lipopolysaccharides, Plasmid, 1998, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 73–83.
Dereiner, J. and Day, J.M., Associative symbiosis in tropical grass: Characterization of microorganisms and dinitrogen fixing sites, Symposium on Nitrogen Fixation, Newton, W.E. and Nijmans, C.J, Eds., Pullman: Washington State Univ. Press, 1976, pp. 518–538.
Katsy, E.I. and Prilipov, A.G., Mobile elements of an Azospirillum brasilense Sp245 85-MDa plasmid involved in replicon fusions, Plasmid, 2009, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 22–29.
Altschul, S.F., Madden, T.L., Schaffer, A.A., et al., Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: A new generation of protein database search programs, Nucleic Acids Res., 1997, vol. 25, no. 17, pp. 3389–3402.
Anderson, J.K., Smith, T.G., and Hoover, T.R., Sense and sensibility: Flagellum-mediated gene regulation, Trends Microbiol., 2010, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 30–37.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Original Russian Text © E.A. Kovtunov, L.P. Petrova, A.V. Shelud’ko, E.I. Katsy, 2013, published in Genetika, 2013, Vol. 49, No. 8, pp. 1013–1016.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kovtunov, E.A., Petrova, L.P., Shelud’ko, A.V. et al. Transposon insertion into a chromosomal copy of flhB gene is concurrent with defects in the formation of polar and lateral flagella in the bacterium Azospirillum brasilense Sp245. Russ J Genet 49, 881–884 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795413080061
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795413080061