Twitching motility of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia under iron limitation: In-silico, phenotypic and proteomic approaches

Abstract

This study investigates the twitching ability of 28 clinical and five environmental strains of S. maltophilia grown under iron-depleted condition through in-silico, phenotypic and proteomics approaches. Rapid Annotations using Subsystem Technology (RAST) analysis revealed the presence of 21 targets of type IV pilus shared across S. maltophilia strains K279a, R551-3, D457 and JV3. The macroscopic twitching assay showed that only clinical isolates produced a zone of twitching with a mean of 22.00 mm under normal and 25.00 mm under iron-depleted conditions. (p = 0.002). Environmental isolates did not show any significant twitching activity in both conditions tested. Isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantification (ITRAQ) analysis showed altered expression of twitching motility protein PilT (99.08-fold change), flagellar biosynthesis protein FliC (20.14-fold change), and fimbrial protein (0.70-fold change) in response to iron-depleted condition. Most of the strains that have the ability to twitch under the normal condition, exhibit enhanced twitching during iron limitation. ARTICLE HISTORY

Full pathogen characterisation: species identification including the detection of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance genes via multiplex DNA-assays

“…The genes that escaped detection encode mainly single components of multidomain flagellar and pili proteins. For instance, discussing the P. aeruginosa results, pilM is a part of the type IV pili among a lot others, such as pilT and pilP , which were detected 83 . pilH is embedded in an operon along with pilG , pilI , and pilJ 84 .…”

Evaluation of Azithromycin and Fenugreek Oil as Anti-virulence Agents against Stenotrophomonas maltophilia MultiDrug Resistant Clinical Isolates

“…S. maltophilia ATCC 13637 showed a complete inhibition of twitching motility with AZM, but this was not the same as FO, which only caused a 19% decrease in the interstitial zone surface area. Kalidasan and Neela investigated twitching motility in S. maltophilia and found that 67.85% (19/28) of the isolates had twitching motility (Kalidasan & Neela, 2020), while Cruz-Córdova et al stated that 43.33% (13/30) of the isolates only showed twitching motility (Cruz-Córdova et al, 2020).…”

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia virulence: a current view

“…To date, the role of type IV pili in S. maltophilia virulence has not been sufficiently studied. Kalidasan and Neela (2020) have proposed a theoretical model for S. maltophilia type IV pilus based on Rapid Annotations using Subsystem Technology (RAST) analysis that provided high quality genome annotations for bacterial genomes across the whole phylogenetic tree, and previous reports on P. aeruginosa .…”