title: Evaluation of the effects of erythritol on gene expression in Brucella abortus.
abstract: Bacteria of the genus Brucella have the unusual capability to catabolize erythritol and this property has been associated with their virulence mainly because of the presence of erythritol in bovine foetal tissues and because the attenuated S19 vaccine strain is the only Brucella strain unable to oxydize erythritol. In this work we have analyzed the transcriptional changes produced in Brucella by erythritol by means of two high throughput approaches: RNA hybridization against a microarray containing most of Brucella ORF's constructed from the Brucella ORFeome and next generation sequencing of Brucella mRNA in an Illumina GAIIx platform. The results obtained showed the overexpression of a group of genes, many of them in a single cluster around the ery operon, able to co-ordinately mediate the transport and degradation of erythritol into three carbon atoms intermediates that will be then converted into fructose-6P (F6P) by gluconeogenesis. Other induced genes participating in the nonoxidative branch of the pentose phosphate shunt and the TCA may collaborate with the ery genes to conform an efficient degradation of sugars by this route. On the other hand, several routes of amino acid and nucleotide biosynthesis are up-regulated whilst amino acid transport and catabolism genes are down-regulated. These results corroborate previous descriptions indicating that in the presence of erythritol, this sugar was used preferentially over other compounds and provides a neat explanation of the the reported stimulation of growth induced by erythritol.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biología Molecular, Instituto de Biomedicina y Biotecnología de Cantabria IBBTEC, Universidad de Cantabria-CSIC-SODERCAN, Santander, Cantabria, Spain.
authors.forename: María Cruz
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Rodríguez
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Viadas
authors.forename: Asunción
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Seoane
authors.forename: Félix Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Sangari
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: López-Goñi
authors.forename: Juan María
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: García-Lobo
mesh_terms: D000596:Amino Acids / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D002003:Brucella abortus / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000737:chemistry; D002417:Cattle; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004896:Erythritol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005636:Fructosephosphates / Q000378:metabolism; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial / Q000187:drug effects*; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D008954:Models, Biological; D009711:Nucleotides / Q000737:chemistry; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D014774:Virulence
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D002241:Carbohydrates; D005636:Fructosephosphates; D009711:Nucleotides; D012333:RNA, Messenger; C027618:fructose-6-phosphate; D004896:Erythritol