The regulation of the cyanide-insensitive oxidase (CIO) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that can synthesize HCN, is reported. The expression of a cioA-lacZ transcriptional fusion, CioA protein levels and CIO activity were low in exponential phase but induced about fivefold upon entry into stationary phase. Varying the O 2 transfer coefficient from 11?5 h 21 to 87?4 h 21 had no effect on CIO expression and no correlation was observed between CIO induction and the dissolved O 2 levels in the growth medium. However, a mutant deleted for the O 2 -sensitive transcriptional regulator ANR derepressed CIO expression in an O 2 -sensitive manner, with the highest induction occurring under low-O 2 conditions. Therefore, CIO expression can respond to a signal generated by low O 2 levels, but this response is normally kept in check by ANR repression. ANR may play an important role in preventing overexpression of the CIO in relation to other terminal oxidases. A component present in spent culture medium was able to induce CIO expression. However, experiments with purified N-butanoyl-L-homoserine lactone or N-(3-oxododecanoyl)homoserine lactone ruled out a role for these quorum-sensing molecules in the control of CIO expression. Cyanide was a potent inducer of the CIO at physiologically relevant concentrations and experiments using spent culture medium from a DhcnB mutant, which is unable to synthesize cyanide, showed that cyanide was the inducing factor present in P. aeruginosa spent culture medium. However, the finding that in a DhcnB mutant cioA-lacZ expression was induced normally upon entry into stationary phase indicated that cyanide was not the endogenous inducer of the terminal oxidase. The authors suggest that the failure of O 2 to have an effect on CIO expression in the wild-type can be explained either by the requirement for an additional, stationary-phase-specific inducing signal or by the loss of an exponential-phase-specific repressing signal. INTRODUCTIONPseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that causes a variety of nosocomial infections, including pneumonia, urinary tract infections, surgical wound infections, and bloodstream infections (for a review see Deretic, 2000). It causes life-threatening illness in patients with cystic fibrosis. Initially, P. aeruginosa colonizes the airways with other pathogens such as Haemophilus influenzae and Staphylococcus aureus. However, in most of these patients chronic lung disease develops in which the bacterial population consists almost exclusively of P. aeruginosa in the form of biofilms (Govan & Deretic, 1996). P. aeruginosa is a facultative anaerobe that preferentially obtains its energy via aerobic respiration, but it is well adapted to conditions of limited O 2 supply (Palleroni, 1984;Davies et al., 1989). It is capable of anaerobic growth with nitrate as a terminal electron acceptor and in the absence of nitrate it is able to ferment arginine, generating ATP by substrate-level phosphorylation (Palleroni, 1984;Davies et al., 1989;Van der Wauven et ...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen which demonstrates considerable respiratory versatility, possessing up to five terminal oxidases. One oxidase, the cyanide-insensitive oxidase (CIO), has been previously shown to be resistant to the potent respiratory inhibitor cyanide, a toxin that is synthesized by this bacterium. This study investigated the physiological relationship between hydrogen cyanide production and the CIO. It was found that cyanide is produced in P. aeruginosa at similar levels irrespective of its complement of CIO, indicating that the CIO is not an obligatory electron sink for cyanide synthesis. However, MICs for cyanide and growth in its presence demonstrated that the CIO provides P. aeruginosa with protection against the effects of exogenous cyanide. Nevertheless, the presence of cyanide did not affect the viability of cio mutant strains compared to the wild-type during prolonged incubation in stationary phase. The detection of the fermentation end products acetate and succinate in stationary-phase culture supernatants suggests that P. aeruginosa, irrespective of its CIO complement, may in part rely upon fermentation for energy generation in stationary phase. Furthermore, the decrease in cyanide levels during incubation in sealed flasks suggested that active breakdown of HCN by the culture was taking place. To investigate the possibility that the CIO may play a role in pathogenicity, wild-type and cio mutant strains were tested in the paralytic killing model of Caenorhabditis elegans, a model in which cyanide is the principal toxic agent leading to nematode death. The CIO mutant had delayed killing kinetics, demonstrating that the CIO is required for full pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa in this animal model.

Mutation of the cyanide-insensitive terminal oxidase ofPseudomonas aeruginosa leads to pleiotropic effects. A cio mutant and strains, including the wild-type, carrying the cioAB genes on a multicopy plasmid were temperature-sensitive and had a cell division defect, leading to the formation of non-septate, multinucleated filaments. Such strains of this intrinsically antibiotic-resistant bacterium were more sensitive to a range of antibiotics including chloramphenicol, ␤-lactams, quinolones, aminoglycosides, and macrolides. The effect of cio mutation on ⌬p-dependent accumulation of chloramphenicol suggested that antibiotic sensitivity resulted from loss of or damage to a multidrug efflux pump. The ability of reducing agents and catalase to suppress the temperature-sensitive phenotype and of catalase to partially suppress antibiotic sensitivity suggested that increased levels of reactive oxygen species might be the cause of the observed phenotypes. Consistent with this was the increased sensitivity of strains to H 2 O 2 and their increased protein carbonyl content, an indicator of oxidative protein modification. The temperature-dependent synthesis of a specific catalase was absent in the cio mutant and in strains carrying multiple plasmid-borne copies of cioAB. We propose that reduced catalase levels result in oxidative modification and consequent loss of function of proteins involved in a range of cellular functions. How mutation or overexpression of the cyanide-insensitive terminal oxidase leads to a loss of catalase activity is unknown at present.Respiratory adaptability is likely to be an important component of the growth and survival of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the diverse ecological niche in which it is found. This Gramnegative, opportunistic pathogen is able to respire and grow under a variety of aerobic and anaerobic conditions (1). Although it preferentially obtains energy via aerobic respiration, it is well adapted to conditions of limited oxygen supply (2). It is capable of anaerobic growth with nitrate as a terminal electron acceptor, and in its absence it is able to ferment arginine, generating ATP by substrate level phosphorylation (1-3).Examination of the genome sequence of P. aeruginosa suggests that its aerobic respiratory chain is extensively branched and is terminated by at least 5 terminal oxidases (4).1 Of four putative terminal oxidases belonging to the heme-copper oxidase superfamily, three are predicted to be cytochrome c oxidases, and one is a quinol oxidase. The fifth oxidase is the cyanide-insensitive oxidase (CIO), 2 which is encoded by the cioAB operon (5, 6). CioA and CioB are homologous to the two subunits of the cytochrome bd quinol oxidases, CydA and CydB, of Escherichia coli, Azotobacter vinelandii, and other bacteria (7) and as such show no homology to members of the ubiquitous heme-copper oxidase superfamily (8). Histidine and methionine residues identified in E. coli cytochrome bd as being ligands to the low spin heme b 558 and high spin b 595 are conserved, as is a periplasmic...

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