Gene regulation by the putative Campylobacter jejuni diguanylate cyclase CbrR

Abstract

As a leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis, Campylobacter jejuni incurs health care costs estimated at $290 million a year in the US and up to 40,000 deaths in children aged 5 and younger worldwide. As such, determining those proteins that regulate C. jejuni virulence factors are prime targets to possibly develop a prophylactic therapy, that as of yet does not exist. CbrR is a C. jejuni response regulator that is annotated as a diguanylate cyclase (DGC), the class of enzyme that catalyzes the synthesis of cyclic di-GMP, a universal bacterial second message molecule, from GTP. In C. jejuni strain DRH212, an unmarked deletion mutant, cbrR-, and complemented mutant, cbrR+, were constructed. Soft agar motility tests, biofilm formation assays, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed. Site-directed mutagenesis was performed on cbrR to make alanine substitutions in both the autoinhibitory site (I-site) and active site and differential radial capillary of action ligand (DRaCALA) assays were performed to determine nucleotide binding by wild-type CbrR and the CbrR point mutants. Soft agar motility assays indicated a hyper-motile phenotype associated with the C. jejuni cbrR- mutant, whereas motility was all but negated in the cbrR+ complement. Biofilm assays and SEM demonstrated similar formation and robustness of biofilms between wild type and cbrR- mutant, however cbrR+ was unable to form significant biofilms in 72 hours. TEM images showed similar cellular morphology between cbrR-, wild type, and cbrR+, however cbrR+ cells had fewer flagella. DRaCALA assays showed wild-type CbrR and the active site mutant were both able to bind GTP and cyclic di-GMP, whereas the I-site mutant lost the ability to bind cyclic di-GMP, indicating the product binding site on CbrR. The highly conserved diguanylate cyclase CbrR is the only annotated DGC in the C. jejuni genome. Though the active site sequence is highly variant when compared to the consensus sequence, this protein is able to bind both substrate and product of the chemical synthesis of cyclic di-GMP and has now been shown to be a negative regulator of motility, a critical virulence factor in C. jejuni pathogenesis.