GacA regulates symbiosis and mediates lifestyle transitions in <i>Pseudomonas</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Through horizontal gene transfer, closely related bacterial strains assimilate distinct sets of genes, resulting in significantly varied lifestyles. However, it remains unclear how strains properly regulate horizontally transferred virulence genes. We hypothesized that strains may use components of the core genome to regulate diverse horizontally acquired genes. To investigate how closely related bacteria assimilate and activate horizontally acquired DNA, we used a model consisting of strains in the brassicacearum / corrugata / mediterranea (BCM) subclade of Pseudomonas fluorescens , including Pseudomonas species N2E2 and N2C3, which exhibit contrasting lifestyles on the model plant Arabidopsis. Pseudomonas sp. N2E2 is a plant commensal and contains genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes for the antifungal compound 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (DAPG). In contrast, Pseudomonas sp. N2C3 lacks DAPG biosynthesis and has gained a pathogenic island encoding syringomycin (SYR)- and syringopeptin (SYP)-like toxins from the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae . This causes a transition in lifestyle from plant-protective N2E2 to plant-pathogenic N2C3. We found that N2E2 and N2C3 share a highly conserved two-component system GacA/S, a known regulator of DAPG and SYR/SYP. Using knockout mutations, we found that a ΔgacA mutation resulted in loss of expression of SYR/SYP virulence genes and returned pathogenic N2C3 to a plant commensal lifestyle. Our study further explored the conservation of regulatory control across strains by demonstrating that GacA genes from both distant and closely related Pseudomonas strains could functionally complement one another across the genus. IMPORTANCE Emerging pathogens represent a significant threat to humans, agriculture, and natural ecosystems. Bacterial horizontal gene transfer (HGT) aids in the acquisition of novel genes that facilitate adaptation to new environments. Our work shows a novel role for GacA in orchestrating the regulatory changes necessary for virulence and lifestyle transitions facilitated by HGT. These findings suggest that the GacA/S system plays a key role in mediating transitions across diverse Pseudomonas symbiotic lifestyles. This work provides insights into the mechanisms that drive the emergence of pathogenic strains and highlights potential targets for managing bacterial threats to plant health.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".