The SaeRS two-component system is a master activator of virulence factor transcription in Staphylococcus aureus, but the cellular factors that control its activity are unknown. Fatty acid (FA) kinase is a two-component enzyme system required for extracellular FA uptake and SaeRS activity. Here, we demonstrate the existence of an intracellular nonesterified FA pool in S. aureus that is elevated in strains lacking FA kinase activity. SaeRS-mediated transcription is restored in FA kinase-negative strains when the intracellular FA pool is reduced either by growth with FA-depleted bovine serum albumin to extract the FA into the medium or by the heterologous expression of Neisseria gonorrhoeae acyl-acyl carrier protein synthetase to activate FA for phospholipid synthesis. These data show that FAs act as negative regulators of SaeRS signaling, and FA kinase activates SaeRS-dependent virulence factor production by lowering inhibitory FA levels. Thus, FA kinase plays a role in cellular lipid homeostasis by activating FA for incorporation into phospholipid, and it indirectly regulates SaeRS signaling by maintaining a low intracellular FA pool.
Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular Gram-positive bacterium that is the primary cause of the disease listeriosis (1). The environmentally hardy and ubiquitous L. monocytogenes is ingested through contaminated food products and can cause noninvasive diseases, such as gastroenteritis, or invade through the intestinal epithelium to cause central nervous system infections or bacteremia. L. monocytogenes poses a major medical threat for pregnant women and immunocompromised patients. Yearly outbreaks of L. monocytogenes in a variety of food products from fruits to ice cream underscore the need to understand the requirements for L. monocytogenes infection and discover new methods to inhibit the growth of L. monocytogenes.The phospholipids of L. monocytogenes are composed of branched-chain fatty acids synthesized by the L. monocytogenes type II fatty acid synthesis system. Decreasing the synthesis of branchedchain fatty acids by the genetic deletion of the branched-chain ␣-keto acid dehydrogenase compromises the environmental survival and intracellular pathogenesis of L. monocytogenes (2-6). The pathways for fatty acid synthesis, phospholipid synthesis, and exogenous fatty acid incorporation of L. monocytogenes are predicted to be the same as those for the phylogenetically related and wellcharacterized Staphylococcus aureus system (Fig. 1). Fatty acids are synthesized using a prototypical type II bacterial fatty acid synthesis, with 2-methylbutyryl-coenzyme A (CoA) as the primer, to make branch-chain fatty acids (3,5,(7)(8)(9)). An acyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) of the appropriate length is used as the acyl donor by the PlsX/Y/C system to make phosphatidic acid from glycerol-3-phosphate (10, 11). Exogenous fatty acids are incorporated via the fatty acid kinase system (12)(13)(14). An unusual feature of L. monocytogenes fatty acid synthesis is the presence of four genes that may encode enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductases, including a FabI, a FabL, and two FabK isoforms, rather than the single FabI found in S. aureus and a variety of other bacterial pathogens. The FabL isoform was discovered in the phylogenetically related Bacillus, which also has a FabI (15). Both proteins function in fatty acid synthesis in Bacillus. The FabK isoform is a flavoprotein unrelated to FabI that was originally discovered in Streptococcus pneumoniae (16). The Enterococcus faecalis genome encodes both FabI and FabK, but FabI is responsible for the bulk of fatty acid synthesis while FabK plays a minor role in supporting fatty acid synthesis (17).The goal of this study was to identify which of the putative L. monocytogenes reductase genes code for functional enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductases, assess their contribution to supporting type II bacterial fatty acid synthesis, and determine their role in planktonic and intracellular growth. Complete inhibition of FabI using the FabI selective inhibitor AFN-1252 reduced the fatty acid synthesis of L. monocytogenes strain 10403S by 80% and reduced the growth rate of L. monocytog...
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