SignificanceCompetition among cooccurring bacteria can change the structure and function of a microbial community. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that impact such interactions in vivo. We used the association between bioluminescent bacteria and their squid host to study how environmentally transmitted bacteria compete for a limited number of host colonization sites. Our work suggests that Vibrio fischeri use a type VI secretion system, acting as a contact-dependent interbacterial “weapon,” to eliminate competing strains from cooccupying sites in the host. This work illuminates a mechanism by which strain-specific differences drive closely related bacteria to engage in lethal battles as they establish a beneficial symbiosis, revealing how genetic variation among potential colonizers directly impacts the spatial structure of the host-associated population.

Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative bacterium that causes diseases such as pneumonia, bacteremia, and soft tissue infections in hospitalized patients. Relatively little is known about how A. baumannii causes these infections. Thus, we used insertion sequencing (INSeq), a combination of transposon mutagenesis and massively parallel next-generation sequencing, to identify novel virulence factors of A. baumannii. To this end, we generated a random transposon mutant library containing 150,000 unique insertions in A. baumannii strain ATCC 17978. The INSeq analysis identified 453 genes required for growth in rich medium. The library was then used in a murine pneumonia model, and the relative levels of abundance of mutants before and after selection in the mouse were compared. When genes required for growth in rich medium were removed from the analysis, 157 genes were identified as necessary for persistence in the mouse lung. Several of these encode known virulence factors of A. baumannii, such as OmpA and ZnuB, which validated our approach. A large number of the genes identified were predicted to be involved in amino acid and nucleotide metabolism and transport. Other genes were predicted to encode an integration host factor, a transmembrane lipoprotein, and proteins involved in stress response and efflux pumps. Very few genes, when disrupted, resulted in an increase in A. baumannii numbers during host infection. The INSeq approach identified a number of novel virulence determinants of A. baumannii, which are candidate targets for therapeutic interventions.IMPORTANCE A. baumannii has emerged as a frequent cause of serious infections in hospitals and community settings. Due to increasing antibiotic resistance, alternative approaches, such as antivirulence strategies, are desperately needed to fight A. baumannii infections. Thorough knowledge of A. baumannii pathogenicity is essential for such approaches but is currently lacking. With the increasingly widespread use of massively parallel sequencing, a class of techniques known as transposon insertion sequencing has been developed to perform comprehensive virulence screens of bacterial genomes in vivo. We have applied one of these approaches (INSeq) to uncover novel virulence factors in A. baumannii. We identified several such factors, including those predicted to encode amino acid and nucleotide metabolism proteins, an integration host factor protein, stress response factors, and efflux pumps. These results greatly expand the number of A. baumannii virulence factors and uncover potential targets for antivirulence treatments.

Mechanisms for controlling symbiont populations are critical for maintaining the associations that exist between a host and its microbial partners. We describe here the transcriptional, metabolic, and ultrastructural characteristics of a diel rhythm that occurs in the symbiosis between the squid Euprymna scolopes and the luminous bacterium Vibrio fischeri. The rhythm is driven by the host's expulsion from its light-emitting organ of most of the symbiont population each day at dawn. The transcriptomes of both the host epithelium that supports the symbionts and the symbiont population itself were characterized and compared at four times over this daily cycle. The greatest fluctuation in gene expression of both partners occurred as the day began. Most notable was an up-regulation in the host of >50 cytoskeleton-related genes just before dawn and their subsequent down-regulation within 6 h. Examination of the epithelium by TEM revealed a corresponding restructuring, characterized by effacement and blebbing of its apical surface. After the dawn expulsion, the epithelium reestablished its polarity, and the residual symbionts began growing, repopulating the light organ. Analysis of the symbiont transcriptome suggested that the bacteria respond to the effacement by up-regulating genes associated with anaerobic respiration of glycerol; supporting this finding, lipid analysis of the symbionts' membranes indicated a direct incorporation of host-derived fatty acids. After 12 h, the metabolic signature of the symbiont population shifted to one characteristic of chitin fermentation, which continued until the following dawn. Thus, the persistent maintenance of the squid-vibrio symbiosis is tied to a dynamic diel rhythm that involves both partners.Euprymna scolopes | microarray | mutualism | Vibrio fischeri | cytoskeleton

Microbial symbioses are essential for the normal development and growth of animals1,2,3. Often, symbionts must be acquired from the environment during each generation, and identification of the relevant symbiotic partner against a myriad of unwanted relationships is a formidable task4. While examples of this specificity are well-documented, the genetic mechanisms governing it are poorly characterized5. Here we show that the two-component sensor kinase RscS is necessary and sufficient for conferring efficient colonization of Euprymna scolopes squid by bioluminescent Vibrio fischeri from the North Pacific Ocean. In the squid symbiont V. fischeri ES114, RscS controls light-organ colonization by inducing the Syp exopolysaccharide, a mediator of biofilm formation during initial infection. A genome-level comparison revealed that rscS, while present in squid symbionts, is absent from the fish symbiont V. fischeri MJ11. We found that heterologous expression of RscS in strain MJ11 conferred the ability to colonize E. scolopes in a manner comparable to that of natural squid isolates. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses support an important role for rscS in the evolution of the squid symbiosis. Our results demonstrate that a regulatory gene can alter the host range of animal-associated bacteria. We show that, by encoding a regulator and not an effector that interacts directly with the host, a single gene can contribute to the evolution of host specificity by switching “on” pre-existing capabilities for interaction with animal tissue.

Animal epithelial tissue becomes reproducibly colonized by specific environmental bacteria. The bacteria (microbiota) perform critical functions for the host's tissue development, immune system development, and nutrition; yet the processes by which bacterial diversity in the environment is selected to assemble the correct communities in the host are unclear. To understand the molecular determinants of microbiota selection, we examined colonization of a simplified model in which the light organ of Euprymna scolopes squid is colonized exclusively by Vibrio fischeri bacteria. We applied highthroughput insertion sequencing to identify which bacterial genes are required during host colonization. A library of over 41,000 unique transposon insertions was analyzed before and after colonization of 1,500 squid hatchlings. Mutants that were reproducibly depleted following squid colonization represented 380 genes, including 37 that encode known colonization factors. Validation of select mutants in defined competitions against the wild-type strain identified nine mutants that exhibited a reproducible colonization defect. Some of the colonization factors identified included genes predicted to influence copper regulation and secretion. Other mutants exhibited defects in biofilm development, which is required for aggregation in host mucus and initiation of colonization. Biofilm formation in culture and in vivo was abolished in a strain lacking the cytoplasmic chaperone DnaJ, suggesting an important role for protein quality control during the elaboration of bacterial biofilm in the context of an intact host immune system. Overall these data suggest that cellular stress responses and biofilm regulation are critical processes underlying the reproducible colonization of animal hosts by specific microbial symbionts.H umans and other animals are often sterile before birth, from which point they immediately proceed to acquire environmental bacteria (1). The bacteria that reproducibly colonize animal hosts are critical for host tissue development, immune system development, and nutrient acquisition. The selection process by which the functional symbionts take residence in the animal from among the great diversity of environmental microbes is poorly understood, so model systems have been especially valuable to examine how specific patterns of colonization are shaped by the genetic makeup of the bacteria and the host environment (2).The light organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, is colonized exclusively by the Gram-negative luminous bacterium Vibrio fischeri. The host inhabits seawater containing 10 6 bacteria per milliliter, with V. fischeri comprising at most 0.02% of the environmental population (3). E. scolopes hatch without symbionts, but then rapidly acquire environmental bacteria and proceed to select for V. fischeri in a "winnowing" process that ensures colonization by only the specific symbiont (4). The squid-Vibrio system thus presents an opportunity to investigate the processes that underlie acquisition of s...

c Chitin, a polymer of N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), is noted as the second most abundant biopolymer in nature. Chitin serves many functions for marine bacteria in the family Vibrionaceae ("vibrios"), in some instances providing a physical attachment site, inducing natural genetic competence, and serving as an attractant for chemotaxis. The marine luminous bacterium Vibrio fischeri is the specific symbiont in the light-emitting organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes. The bacterium provides the squid with luminescence that the animal uses in an antipredatory defense, while the squid supports the symbiont's nutritional requirements. V. fischeri cells are harvested from seawater during each host generation, and V. fischeri is the only species that can complete this process in nature. Furthermore, chitin is located in squid hemocytes and plays a nutritional role in the symbiosis. We demonstrate here that chitin oligosaccharides produced by the squid host serve as a chemotactic signal for colonizing bacteria. V. fischeri uses the gradient of host chitin to enter the squid light organ duct and colonize the animal. We provide evidence that chitin serves a novel function in an animal-bacterial mutualism, as an animal-produced bacterium-attracting synomone. Horizontally transmitted microbial symbioses entail specificity challenges for both partners during each host generation (17). The juvenile host often enters the world lacking its partner microbe(s) and recruits them from a complex environmental assemblage of bacteria; for their part, the bacterial symbionts find the correct host niche to the exclusion of nonsymbiotic and pathogenic bacteria. Colonization specificity has been well studied in nitrogen-fixing plant symbionts, revealing detailed chemical communication that takes place between host plants and colonizing rhizobia to direct the symbionts to the correct host (15, 32). For example, plant flavonoids induce the production of bacterial Nod factors, chitin derivatives decorated with oligosaccharides that are specific for their cognate host plant. In turn, these factors signal plant-specific receptor kinases that result in plant tissue development.In animal associations-especially those in marine environments, which often contain Ͼ10 6 bacterial cells per milliliter of seawater-the need for effective mechanisms to assure recruitment and host specificity is clear; however, the underlying molecular determinants are poorly understood. Colonization of the Hawaiian bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes by the bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri has proven to be an especially valuable platform for identifying and characterizing such determinants. A "winnowing" process has been described (30) during which first Gram-negative bacteria, then V. fischeri, and finally motile V. fischeri specifically are selected for their ability to colonize this model host. Within the mantle cavity of the squid, the ciliated surface epithelium of the nascent light-emitting organ plays an important role. In the presence of hos...

Bacterial flagellar motility is a complex cellular behavior required for the colonization of the light-emitting organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, by the beneficial bioluminescent symbiont Vibrio fischeri. We characterized the basis of this behavior by performing (i) a forward genetic screen to identify mutants defective in soft-agar motility, as well as (ii) a transcriptional analysis to determine the genes that are expressed downstream of the flagellar master regulator FlrA. Mutants with severe defects in soft-agar motility were identified due to insertions in genes with putative roles in flagellar motility and in genes that were unexpected, including those predicted to encode hypothetical proteins and cell division–related proteins. Analysis of mutants for their ability to enter into a productive symbiosis indicated that flagellar motility mutants are deficient, while chemotaxis mutants are able to colonize a subset of juvenile squid to light-producing levels. Thirty-three genes required for normal motility in soft agar were also downregulated in the absence of FlrA, suggesting they belong to the flagellar regulon of V. fischeri. Mutagenesis of putative paralogs of the flagellar motility genes motA motB, and fliL revealed that motA1 motB1, and both fliL1 and fliL2, but not motA2 and motB2, likely contribute to soft-agar motility. Using these complementary approaches, we have characterized the genetic basis of flagellar motility in V. fischeri and furthered our understanding of the roles of flagellar motility and chemotaxis in colonization of the juvenile squid, including identifying 11 novel mutants unable to enter into a productive light-organ symbiosis.

The marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri uses two acyl-homoserine lactone (acyl-HSL) quorum-sensing systems. The earlier signal, octanoyl-HSL, produced by AinS, is required for normal colonization of the squid Euprymna scolopes and, in culture, is necessary for a normal growth yield. In examining the latter requirement, we found that during growth in a glycerol/tryptone-based medium, wild-type V. fischeri cells initially excrete acetate but, in a metabolic shift termed the acetate switch, they subsequently utilize the acetate, removing it from the medium. In contrast, an ainS mutant strain grown in this medium does not remove the excreted acetate, which accumulates to lethal levels. The acetate switch is characterized by the induction of acs, the gene encoding acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) synthetase, leading to uptake of the excreted acetate. Wild-type cells induce an acs transcriptional reporter 25-fold, coincident with the disappearance of the extracellular acetate; in contrast, the ainS mutant did not display significant induction of the acs reporter. Supplementation of the medium of an ainS mutant with octanoyl-HSL restored normal levels of acs induction and acetate uptake. Additional mutant analyses indicated that acs regulation was accomplished through the regulator LitR but was independent of the LuxIR quorum-signaling pathway. Importantly, the acs mutant of V. fischeri has a competitive defect when colonizing the squid, indicating the importance of proper control of acetate metabolism in the light of organ symbiosis. This is the first report of quorum-sensing control of the acetate switch, and it indicates a metabolic connection between acetate utilization and cell density.