Regulation, activities, and physiological functions of the multidrug efflux pump mdtEF during the anaerobic adaptation of Escherichia coli

• Main Authors: Zhang, Yiliang, 张毅良
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) 2013
• Subjects: Drug resistance in microorganisms - Genetic aspects.; Multidrug resistance.; Escherichia coli - Genetics.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10722/182276

Drug efflux represents an important protection mechanism against antibiotics and environmental toxic compounds in bacteria. Efflux genes constitute from 6% to 18% of all transporters in bacterial genomes, yet their regulation, natural substrates, and physiological functions are poorly understood. Among the 20 chromosomally encoded efflux genes in Escherichia coli K-12, only the AcrAB-TolC efflux system is constitutively expressed under the ordinary laboratory growth of E. coli. To explore conditions and circumstances that trigger the expression of additional efflux genes as well as their physiological functions, I examined the expression of all 20 efflux genes under a physiologically relevant circumstance for E. coli, which is anaerobic condition in this study. I found that expression of an RND type efflux pump MdtEF is up-regulated more than 20 fold when E. coli is cultured under anaerobic conditions. Mutagenesis studies revealed that the anaerobically induced expression of mdtEF is subject to the regulation of the anaerobic global transcription factor ArcA. Direct drug efflux and tolerance assay showed that anaerobically grown E. coli cells display an increased efflux activity and enhanced drug tolerance in an MdtEF dependent manner, confirming the functional up-regulation of the efflux pump MdtEF in the anaerobic physiology of E. coli. Since the up-regulation of mdtEF by anaerobic growth occurs in the absence of antibiotics and drugs, I speculate that MdtEF has physiological functions under the anaerobic growth of E. coli. To explore this, I first compared the viability of ΔmdtEF and WT MG1655 strains and found that ΔmdtEF caused a decreased cell survival during prolonged anaerobic growth of E. coli. Interestingly, this defect became more pronounced when cells grow in the presence of 10 mM nitrate, but no defect was observed in ΔmdtEF strain when cells grow in the presence of 40 mM fumarate under the same anaerobic conditions, suggesting that MdtEF has physiological roles relevant to the anaerobic respiration of nitrate. I further found that E. coli cells harboring the deletion of mdtEF are susceptible to indole nitrosative derivatives, a class of toxic by-products formed and accumulated within E. coli when the bacterium respires nitrate under anaerobic conditions, and deletion of the genes responsible for the biosynthesis of indole, tnaAB, restores the growth defect of the ΔmdtEF strain during anaerobic respiration of nitrate. Taken together, I conclude that the multidrug efflux pump MdtEF expels the nitrosated indole derivatives out of E. coli cells under anaerobic conditions. Since the production and accumulation of nitrosyl indole derivatives is ascribed to the reactive nitrogen species elicited when E. coli consumes nitrate, I propose that the up-regulated multidrug efflux pump MdtEF functions to protect E. coli from nitrosative damage in its anaerobic ecological niches. === published_or_final_version === Biological Sciences === Master === Master of Philosophy