: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is an opportunistic pathogen that results in nosocomial infections in immunocompromised individuals. These bacteria colonize on the surface of medical devices and therapeutic equipment like urinary catheters, endoscopes, and ventilators, causing respiratory and urinary tract infections. The low outer membrane permeability of multidrug-resistance efflux systems and the two chromosomally encoded β-lactamases present in S.maltophilia are challenging for arsenal control. The cell-associated and extracellular virulence factors in S.maltophilia are involved in colonization and biofilm formation on the host surfaces. The spread of antibiotic-resistant genes in the pathogenic S.maltophilia attributes to bacterial resistance against a wide range of antibiotics, including penicillin, quinolones, and carbapenems. So far, tetracycline derivatives, fluoroquinolones, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) are considered promising antibiotics against S.maltophilia. Due to the adaptive nature of the intrinsically resistant mechanism towards the number of antibiotics and its ability to acquire new resistance via mutation and horizontal gene transfer, it is quite tricky for medicinal contribution against S.maltophilia. The current review summarizes the literary data of pathogenicity, quorum sensing, biofilm formation, virulence factors, and antibiotic resistance of S.maltophilia.

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is a low-virulence opportunistic pathogen that causes human infections, especially in profound ill patients. Even if the bacterial genomes seem understood, the activities of many proteins are unknown. The purpose of our current research is to unravel the functional characteristics i.e. functional domain search and valuable regions of a hypothetical protein that would aid in the identification of potential drug targets in Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The hypothetical protein of S.maltophilia was located and annotated using different in silico techniques. Our target protein was predicted to be Transcrip Reg superfamily YebC/PmpR based on motif and domain analysis by functional annotation tools. The regulator proteins of the YebC family are part of a vast collection of widely conserved hypothetical proteins with unclear functions. Examining and reviewing the function of YebC family protein, they repress Quorum sensing by directly binding to the promoter region of QS master regulator pqrS. It has also been reported that T3SS expression is regulated by YebC, to activate the virulence expression direct interaction with one of the T3SS promoters is needed.

This book contains the abstracts of the papers presented at the National Conference on Biological, Biochemical, Biomedical, Bioenergy, and Environmental Biotechnology (NCB4EBT-2021) Organized by the Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology Warangal, India held on 29–30 January 2021. This conference is the first of its kind organized by NIT-W which covered an array of interesting topics in biotechnology. This makes it a bit special as it brings together researchers from different disciplines of biotechnology, which in turn will also open new research and cooperation fields for them.

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Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is an emerging global opportunistic pathogen that has been intensively studied for its antibiotic resistance and capacity to cause nosocomial and community-acquired infections. Interestingly, S. maltophilia has already been discovered to tolerate a high concentration of cadmium, selenium, and tellurium. This study showed that this bacterium could survive high doses of heavy metals in various heavy metal salt-containing nutritional media: CdCl2 up to 1 mM, Pb (NO3)2 up to 10 mM, FeSO4 up to 10 mM, CuSO4 and ZnCl2 up to 5 mM. Intriguingly, the genomic investigation performed within this study identified the probable genes involved in metal resistance. The genomic data were mapped to uncover possible metal resistance mechanisms in S. maltophilia. The entire genome length of strain SRM01 is 4,968,240 bp, with a GC content of 66%, according to the annotation processes. There were 1659 coding sequences attributed to putative proteins and 4621 coding sequences attributed to recognized functions. Various metal resistance mechanisms which encode gene clusters such as czc, cop, cus, and zur and are critical for the bacteria’s survival in hostile environments were discovered in the S. maltophilia SRM01 strain. Genomic island prediction and phylogenetic tree analysis of the genome and targeted metal resistant genes revealed that metal resistant genes could be transferred by horizontal gene transfer across the species of S. maltophilia.