Affiliation:
1. School of Microbiology and Immunology
2. Centre for Marine Biofouling and Bio-Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The dark green pigmented marine bacterium
Pseudoalteromonas tunicata
colonizes living surfaces and produces a range of extracellular compounds that inhibit common fouling organisms, including marine invertebrate larvae, algae, bacteria, and fungi. We have observed a positive correlation between the antifouling activity of
P. tunicata
strain D2 and the expression of pigmentation. To address the hypothesis that pigmentation and antifouling may be jointly regulated in this organism and to begin to identify potential regulatory elements, we used transposon mutagenesis to generate a strain of
P. tunicata
deficient in antifouling activity. The data presented here describe the phenotypic and molecular characterization of a nonpigmented transposon mutant strain of
P. tunicata
(D2W2). Analyses of the antifouling capabilities of D2W2 demonstrate that this strain is deficient in the ability to inhibit each of the target fouling organisms. Genetic analysis of D2W2 identified a gene, designated
wmpR
(white mutant phenotype), with high sequence similarity to transcriptional regulators ToxR from
Vibrio cholerae
and CadC from
Escherichia coli
. Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis revealed that WmpR is essential for the expression of a significant subset of stationary-phase-induced proteins likely to be important for the synthesis of fouling inhibitors. The identification of a gene involved in the regulation of expression of antifouling phenotypes will contribute to the understanding of the interactions between bacteria and other surface-colonizing organisms in the marine environment.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
Reference34 articles.
1. Basic local alignment search tool
2. Clare, A. S., D. Rittschof, D. J. Gerhart, and J. S. Maki. 1992. Molecular approaches to nontoxic antifouling. Invertebr. Reprod. Dev.22:67–76.
3. Davis, A. R., and A. E. Wright. 1990. Inhibition of larval settlement by natural products from the ascidian, Eudistoma olivaceum (Van Name). J. Chem. Ecol.16:1349–1357.
4. Dell, C. L., M. N. Needly, and E. R. Olson. 1994. Altered pH and lysine signalling mutants of cadC, a gene encoding a membrane-bound transcriptional activator of the Escherichia coli cadBA operon. Mol. Microbiol.14:7–16.
5. De Nys, R., P. D. Steinberg, P. Willemsen, S. A. Dworjanyn, C. L. Gabelish, and R. J. King. 1994. Broad spectrum effects of secondary metabolites from the red algal Delisea pulchra in antifouling assays. Biofouling8:259–271.
Cited by
53 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献