Tao Xu, Yang Wu, Zhiwei Lin, Ralph Bertram, Friedrich Götz, Ying Zhang, Di Qu
Abstract
Biofilms play a crucial role in the pathogenicity of Staphylococcus epidermidis, while little is known about whether the essential YycFG two-component signal transduction system (TCS) is involved in biofilm formation. We used antisense RNA (asRNA) to silence the yycFG TCS in order to study its regulatory functions in S. epidermidis. Strain 1457 expressing asRNA yycF exhibited a significant delay (~4-5 h) in entry to log phase, which was partially complemented by overexpressing ssaA. The expression of asRNA yycF and asRNA yycG resulted in a 68 and 50% decrease in biofilm formation at 6 h, respectively, while they had no significant inhibitory effect on 12 h biofilm formation. The expression of asRNA yycF led to a ~5-fold increase in polysaccharide intercellular adhesion (PIA) production, but it did not affect the expression of accumulation-associated protein (Aap) or the release of extracellular DNA. Consistently, quantitative real-time PCR showed that silencing yycF resulted in an increased transcription of biofilm-related genes, including icaA, arlR, sarA, sarX, and sbp. An in silico search of the YycF regulon for the conserved YycF recognition pattern and a modified motif in S. epidermidis, along with additional gel shift and DNase I footprinting assays, showed that arlR, sarA, sarX, and icaA are directly regulated by YycF. Our data suggests that YycFG modulates S. epidermidis biofilm formation in an ica-dependent manner.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 May 2017.
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#8,913,355
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Outputs from Frontiers in Microbiology
#9,531
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#128,134
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Microbiology
#266
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Altmetric has tracked 26,290,088 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 30,152 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 514 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
