• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.180-186
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• 2012

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a Gram-negative bacterium, is an ubiquitous and opportunistic human pathogen, which expresses many virulence factors through quorum sensing (QS) regulation. QscR, one of the QS signal receptors of P. aeruginosa, has unique features that make it possible to distinguish QscR from other QS receptors. In the present study, we focused on amino acid residues responsible for such a broad signal specificity of QscR. Thus we constructed mutant QscRs: $QscR_{T72I}$, $QscR_{R132M}$, and $QscR_{T140I}$ by substituting $72^{nd}$ threonine, $132^{nd}$ arginine, and $140^{th}$ threonine residues with isoleucine, methionine, and isoleucine, respectively by site-directed mutagenesis. When we examined the activity of these mutant QscRs, $QscR_{R132M}$ failed to respond to N-3-oxododecanoyl homoserine lactone (3OC12-HSL), but $QscR_{T72I}$ and $QscR_{T140I}$ remained the ability to respond to 3OC12-HSL despite much reduction of the sensitivity. When we treated a variety of acyl-HSLs with different structure, $QscR_{T72I}$ and $QscR_{T140I}$ showed better responsiveness to N-decanoyl HSL (C10-HSL) or N-dodecanoyl HSL (C12-HSL) that has no oxo-moiety at $3^{rd}$ carbon of acyl group than to 3OC12-HSL, and $QscR_{R132M}$ showed no responsiveness to any acyl-HSLs tested here. In addition, $QscR_{T72I}$ and $QscR_{T140I}$ were inhibited by 5f, a QscR inhibitor as similarly as wild type QscR was. These results suggest that while the $130^{th}$ arginine is crucial in both activity and acyl-HSL binding of QscR, the $72^{nd}$ and $140^{th}$ threonines are important in the activity, but they are little responsible for the discrimination of acyl-HSLs or competitive inhibitor.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.480-486
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• 2014

Growth restriction by antibiotics is a common feature that pathogenic bacteria must overcome for survival. The struggle of bacteria to escape from growth restriction eventually results in development of antibiotic-resistance through the expression of a set of genes. Here we found that some physiologically important transcriptional regulators of Pseudomonas aeruginosa including QscR, a quorum sensing (QS) receptor, SoxR, a superoxide sensor-regulator, and AntR, a regulator of anthranilate-related secondary metabolism, are activated by various growth-restricted conditions. We generated the growth-restricted conditions by various methods, such as overexpression of PA2537 and treatment with antibiotics or disinfectants. The overexpression of PA2537, encoding an acyltransferase homologue, tightly restricted the growth of P. aeruginosa and significantly activated QscR during the growth restriction. Similarly, treatments with gentamycin, tetracycline, and ethanol also activated QscR near their minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs). Some non-QS regulators, such as AntR and SoxR, were also activated near the MICs in the same conditions. However, LasR and PqsR, other QS receptors of P. aeruginosa, were not activated, suggesting that only a specific set of transcriptional regulators is activated by growth restriction. Since paraquat, a superoxide generator, significantly activated QscR and AntR, we suggest that the oxidative stress generated by growth restriction may be partly involved in this phenomenon.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2011

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that causes various infections on urinary track, cornea, respiratory track, and burn wound site, and mainly relies on quorum sensing (QS) for its virulence. To control the infectivity of P. aeruginosa, we previously synthesized the structural analogues of a major QS signal, N-3-oxododecanoyl homoserine lactone (3OC12-HSL) to use as a QS inhibitor. Two of them (5b and 5f) had been confirmed to have an inhibitory effect on LasR, a major QS signal receptor of P. aeruginosa in the screening by the recombinant Escherichia coli reporter. To further evaluate these compounds, we tested their efficacy to control the QS and virulence of P. aeruginosa. Unlike the result from E. coli reporter, both 5b and 5f failed to affect the LasR activity in P. aeruginosa, but instead they selectively affected the activity of QscR, another 3OC12-HSL receptor of P. aeruginosa. Interestingly, their effect on QscR was complex and opposite to what we obtained with E. coli system. Both 5b and 5f enhanced the QscR activity at the low concentration range (< 10 ${\mu}m$), but high concentration of 5f (${\approx}$1 mM) strongly inhibited QscR. While 5b and 5f didn't affect the production of proteases, the key virulence factor, they significantly reduced the biofilm formation that is important in mediating chronic infections. Especially, 5f inhibited the initial attachment of P. aeruginosa, rather than the biofilm maturation. Based on our results, we suggest that 5f can be applied for an anti-biofilm agent without increasing virulence of P. aeruginosa.

• Proceedings of the Microbiological Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.101-101
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• 2009

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.240-247
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• 2010

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram (-) opportunistic human pathogen causing a wide variety of infections on lung, urinary tract, eyes, and burn wound sites and quorum sensing (QS), a cell density-sensing mechanism plays an essential role in Pseudomonas pathogenesis. In order to investigate the importance of QS in the Pseudomonas infections of Korean patients, we isolated 189 clinical strains of P. aeruginosa from the patients in Pusan Paik Hospital, Busan, South Korea. The QS signal production of these clinical isolates was measured by signal diffusion assay on solid media using reporter strains. While most clinical strains (79.4%) produced the QS signals as similar level as a wild type strain, PAO1 did, where LasR, the initial QS signal sensor-regulator was fully activated, a minority of them (4.2%) produced much less QS signals at the level to which LasR failed to respond. Similarly, while 72.5% of the clinical isolates produced QS signals enough to activate QscR, an another QS signal sensor-regulator, some few of them (9%) produced the QS signals at much lower level where QscR was not activated. For further analysis, we selected 74 clinical strains that were obtained from the patients under suspicion of Pseudomonas infection and investigated the total protease activity that is considered important for virulence. Interestingly, significant portion of them showed very low protease activity (44.6%) or no detectable protease activity (12.2%). When the biofilm-forming ability that is considered very important in chronic infection was examined, most isolates showed lower biofilm-forming activity than PAO1. Similarly, significant portion of clinical isolates showed reduced motility (reduced swarming activity in 51.4% and reduced twitching activity in 41.9%), or non-detectable motility (swarming-negative in 28.4% and twitching-negative in 28.4%). Our result showed that the clinical isolates that produced QS signals at the similar level to wild type could have significantly reduced activities in the protease production, biofilm formation, and motility, and some clinical isolates had unique patterns of motility, biofilm formation, and protease production that are not correlated to their QS activity.