Assessment of bacillus subtilis plasmid pls20 conjugation in the absence of quorum sensing repression

Bacillus subtilis conjugative plasmid pLS20 uses a quorum-sensing mechanism to control expression levels of its conjugation genes, involving the repressor RcopLS20, the anti-repressor Rap-pLS20, and the signaling peptide Phr*pLS20. In previous studies, artificial overexpression of rappLS20 in the do...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mori, Kotaro, Verrine, Valeria, Amatsu, Ryotaro, Fukui, Kaho, Meijer, Wilfried J. J., Ishikawa, Shu, Wipat, Anil, Yoshida, Ken-ichi
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/262714
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/262714
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Bacillus subtilis
Cell aggregation
Conjugation
Fluorescence-activated cell sorting
Plasmids
Descripción
Sumario:Bacillus subtilis conjugative plasmid pLS20 uses a quorum-sensing mechanism to control expression levels of its conjugation genes, involving the repressor RcopLS20, the anti-repressor Rap-pLS20, and the signaling peptide Phr*pLS20. In previous studies, artificial overexpression of rappLS20 in the donor cells was shown to enhance conjugation efficiency. However, we found that the overex-pression of rappLS20 led to various phenotypic traits, including cell aggregation and death, which might have affected the correct determination of the conjugation efficiency when determined by colony formation assay. In the current study, conjugation efficiencies were determined under different conditions using a two-color fluorescence-activated flow cytometry method and measuring a single-round of pLS20-mediated transfer of a mobilizable plasmid. Under standard conditions, the conjugation efficiency obtained by fluorescence-activated flow cytometry was 23-fold higher than that obtained by colony formation. Furthermore, the efficiency difference increased to 45-fold when rappLS20 was overexpressed.