Abstract
When grown on glucose and beta-glucosides, S. pneumoniae shows sequential use of sugars resulting in diauxic growth with variable time extent of the lag phase separating the biphasic growth curve. The pneumococcal beta-glucoside uptake locus containing the PTS transporter spr0276-82, is regulated by a multi-domain transcriptional regulator CelR. In this work, we address the contribution of phosphorylation of the phosphorylable cysteine in the EIIB domain of CelR to diauxic lag. Utilising site-directed mutagenesis of the phosphorylable amino acids in the EIIB and EIIA domains of CelR, we show that the EIIB domain activation is linked to the duration of the lag phase. Analysis of mutants for other PTS systems indicates that a second beta-glucoside PTS (spr0505), not able to support growth on cellobiose, is responsible for the lag during diauxic growth. A mathematical model of the process is devised together with a nonlinear identification procedure which provides model parameter estimates characterizing the single phases of bacterial growth. Parameter identification performed on data recorded in appropriate experiments on mutants allows for establishing a relationship between a specific model parameter, the EIIB domain and the time extent of the diauxic lag. The experimental results and the related insights provided by the mathematical model provide evidence that the conflicting activation of the CelR regulator is at the origin of the lag phase during sequential growth on glucose and cellobiose. This data is the first description of diauxic lag regulation involving two PTS and a multidomain regulator and could serve as a promising approach for studying the S. pneumoniae growth process on complex carbon sources as possibly encountered in the human host.
Highlights
Streptococcus pneumoniae is a community acquired human respiratory pathogen responsible of important life-threatening invasive diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and bacteremia, as well as other less serious but very frequent infections, such as otitis media
When monitoring growth on the beta-glucoside cellobiose in media containing trace amounts of yeast derived carbohydrates, we observed a peculiar growth behaviour with a first rapid phase of growth followed after a short lag period by a second slower exponential growth [9]
By markerless transfer of the whole spr0278-82 locus into another strain, that this growth behaviour is due to import of cellobiose by the well described beta-glucoside locus which is organised in two transcriptional units, one encoding a beta-glucosidase and a second one encoding a multidomain regulator and the subunits of a PTS transporter [6,7]
Summary
Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is a community acquired human respiratory pathogen responsible of important life-threatening invasive diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and bacteremia, as well as other less serious but very frequent infections, such as otitis media. Carbohydrates are crucial for in vivo fitness governing a large number of processes, including virulence and progression to the disease [2,3,4]. This is well reflected by the large number of genes deputed to carbohydrate uptake systems and metabolic enzymes, accounting for a large fraction of the pneumococcal chromosome, which is often not part of the core genome. A functional genomic analysis of carbohydrate uptake in pneumococci was performed in [5], where we identified at least thirty two fermentable carbon sources at the occurrence of twenty-one phosphotransferase systems
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