Aggregated bacteria embedded within
self-secreted extracellular
polymeric substances, or biofilms, are resistant to antibiotics and
cause chronic infections. As such, they are a significant public health
threat. Heme is an abundant iron source for pathogenic bacteria during
infection; many bacteria have systems to detect heme assimilated from
host cells, which is correlated with the transition between acute
and chronic infection states. Here, we investigate the heme-sensing
function of a newly discovered multifactorial sensory hemoprotein
called NosP and its role in biofilm regulation in the soil-dwelling
bacterium Burkholderia thailandensis, the close surrogate of Bio-Safety-Level-3 pathogen Burkholderia pseudomallei. The NosP family protein
has previously been shown to exhibit both nitric oxide (NO)- and heme-sensing
functions and to regulate biofilms through NosP-associated histidine
kinases and two-component systems. Our in vitro studies
suggest that BtNosP exhibits heme-binding kinetics
and thermodynamics consistent with a labile heme-responsive protein
and that the holo-form of BtNosP acts as an inhibitor
of its associated histidine kinase BtNahK. Furthermore,
our in vivo studies suggest that increasing the concentration
of extracellular heme decreases B. thailandensis biofilm formation, and deletion of nosP and nahK abolishes this phenotype, consistent with a model that BtNosP detects heme and exerts an inhibitory effect on BtNahK to decrease the biofilm.
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