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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2007, p. 3225-3231, Vol. 73, No. 10
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.02948-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Second Acyl Homoserine Lactone Production System in the Extreme Acidophile Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans{triangledown}

Mariella Rivas,1,3 Michael Seeger,2 Eugenia Jedlicki,1 and David S. Holmes3*

Institute of Cellular and Molecular Biology (ICBM), Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile,1 Laboratorio de Microbiología Molecular y Biotecnología Ambiental, Departamento de Química, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and Millennium Nucleus of Microbial Ecology and Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology, Valparaíso, Chile,2 Center for Bioinformatics and Genome Biology, MIFAB, Life Science Foundation and Andrés Bello University, Santiago, Chile3

Received 19 December 2006/ Accepted 26 February 2007

The acidophilic proteobacterium Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans is involved in the industrial biorecovery of copper. It is found in acidic environments in biofilms and is important in the biogeochemical cycling of metals and nutrients. Its genome contains a cluster of four genes, glyQ, glysS, gph, and act, that are predicted to encode the {alpha} and ß subunits of glycine tRNA synthetase, a phosphatase, and an acyltransferase, respectively (GenBank accession no. DQ149607). act, cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli, produces acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) principally of chain length C14 according to gas chromatography and mass spectrometry measurements. The AHLs have biological activity as shown by in vivo studies using the reporter strain Sinorhizobium meliloti Rm41 SinI–. Reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) experiments indicate that the four genes are expressed as a single transcript, demonstrating that they constitute an operon. According to semiquantitative RT-PCR results, act is expressed more highly when A. ferrooxidans is grown in medium containing iron than when it is grown in medium containing sulfur. Since AHLs are important intercellular signaling molecules used by many bacteria to monitor their population density in quorum-sensing control of gene expression, this result suggests that A. ferrooxidans has two quorum-sensing systems, one based on Act, as described herein, and the other based on a Lux-like quorum-sensing system, reported previously. The latter system was shown to be upregulated in A. ferrooxidans grown in sulfur medium, suggesting that the two quorum-sensing systems respond to different environmental signals that may be related to their abilities to colonize and use different solid sulfur- and iron-containing minerals.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Center for Bioinformatics and Genome Biology, Life Science Foundation and Andres Bello University, Avda. Zanartu 1482, Santiago, Chile. Phone: 56-2-239-8969. Fax: 56-2-237-2259. E-mail: dsholmes2000{at}yahoo.com

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 9 March 2007.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2007, p. 3225-3231, Vol. 73, No. 10
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.02948-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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