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Original Articles

Mechanisms underlying the virulence regulation of new Vibrio alginolyticus ncRNA Vvrr1 with a comparative proteomic analysis

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Pages 1604-1618 | Received 28 Jun 2019, Accepted 24 Oct 2019, Published online: 12 Nov 2019
 

ABSTRACT

The incidence of Vibrio alginolyticus infections has increased in recent years due to the influence of climate change and rising sea temperature. Vibrio virulence regulatory RNA 1 (Vvrr1) is a newly found noncoding RNA (ncRNA) predicted to be closely related to the adhesion ability of V. alginolyticus based on the previous RNA-seq. In this study, the target genes of Vvrr1 were fully screened and verified by constructing Vvrr1-overexpressing strains and using the proteome sequencing technology. Pyruvate kinase I (pykF) gene was predicted to be a chief target gene of Vvrr1 involved in virulence regulation. The adhesion ability, biofilm formation and virulence were significantly reduced in the Vvrr1-overexpressing and the pykF-silenced strain compared with the wild strains. Similar to the overexpression of Vvrr1, the silencing of pykF also reduced the expression level of virulence genes, such as ndk, eno, sdhB, glpF, and cysH. Meanwhile, by constructing the “pykF-GFP” fusion expression plasmid and using the GFP reporter gene analysis in Escherichia coli, the fluorescence intensity of the strain containing Vvrr1 whole ncRNA sequence vector was found to be significantly weakened. These indicated that Vvrr1 participated in the virulence regulation mechanism of V. alginolyticus by interacting with the virulence gene pykF.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No. 31702384 and 31672694, the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province under contract No. 2019J06020, the Fujian Province Key Laboratory of Special Aquatic Formula Feed under No. TMKJZ1903, and the“Program for Excellent Young Talents in Fujian Province University”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 31672694,31702384]; Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province: [Grant Number 2019J06020].