Salmonella enteric serovar Typhimurium, a major cause of food-borne illness, is capable of using a variety of carbon and nitrogen sources. Fructoselysine and glucoselysine are Maillard reaction products formed by the reaction of glucose or fructose, respectively, with the -amine group of lysine. We report here that S. Typhimurium utilizes fructoselysine and glucoselysine as carbon and nitrogen sources via a mannose family phosphotransferase (PTS) encoded by gfrABCD (glucoselysine/fructoselysine PTS components EIIA, EIIB, EIIC, and EIID; locus numbers STM14_5449 to STM14_5454 in S. Typhimurium 14028s). Genes coding for two predicted deglycases within the gfr operon, gfrE and gfrF, were required for growth with glucoselysine and fructoselysine, respectively. GfrF demonstrated fructoselysine-6-phosphate deglycase activity in a coupled enzyme assay. The biochemical and genetic analyses were consistent with a pathway in which fructoselysine and glucoselysine are phosphorylated at the C-6 position of the sugar by the GfrABCD PTS as they are transported across the membrane. The resulting fructoselysine-6-phosphate and glucoselysine-6-phosphate subsequently are cleaved by GfrF and GfrE to form lysine and glucose-6-phosphate or fructose-6-phosphate. Interestingly, although S. Typhimurium can use lysine derived from fructoselysine or glucoselysine as a sole nitrogen source, it cannot use exogenous lysine as a nitrogen source to support growth. Expression of gfrABCDEF was dependent on the alternative sigma factor RpoN ( 54 ) and an RpoN-dependent LevR-like activator, which we designated GfrR.
IMPORTANCESalmonella physiology has been studied intensively, but there is much we do not know regarding the repertoire of nutrients these bacteria are able to use for growth. This study shows that a previously uncharacterized PTS and associated enzymes function together to transport and catabolize fructoselysine and glucoselysine. Knowledge of the range of nutrients that Salmonella utilizes is important, as it could lead to the development of new strategies for reducing the load of Salmonella in food animals, thereby mitigating its entry into the human food supply.
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is one of the leading causes of food-borne illness. Salmonella causes 11% of all infections caused by bacterial food-borne pathogens in the United States and is responsible for an estimated 1 million cases of salmonellosis in the United States each year, which result in approximately 19,000 hospitalizations and 400 deaths (1). S. Typhimurium causes gastroenteritis in humans but is capable of colonizing a wide range of animals with few or no disease symptoms. S. Typhimurium utilizes a broad array of carbon and nitrogen sources (2), which may contribute to the wide host range of this bacterium. Chadhuri and coworkers found that genes encoding enzymes in a variety of catabolic processes appear to be important for S. Typhimurium colonization of the chicken, pig, and calf (3). Among those catabolic genes, some encoded phosphoenolp...