Abstract
SummaryDifferences in ionic strength, pH, temperature, shear forces, and other environmental factors impact adhesion, and organisms have evolved various strategies to optimize their adhesins for their specific environmental conditions. Many species of Alphaproteobacteria, including members of the order Caulobacterales, use a polar adhesin, called holdfast, for surface attachment and subsequent biofilm formation in both freshwater and marine environments. Hirschia baltica, a marine member of Caulobacterales, produces a holdfast adhesin that tolerates a drastically higher ionic strength than the holdfast produced by its freshwater relative, Caulobacter crescentus. In this work, we show that the holdfast polysaccharide deacetylase HfsH plays an important role in adherence in high-ionic-strength environments. We show that increasing expression of HfsH improves holdfast binding in high-ionic-strength environments. We conclude that HfsH plays a role in modulating holdfast binding at high ionic strength and hypothesize that this modulation occurs through varied deacetylation of holdfast polysaccharides.
Highlights
The development of adhesives that perform well on wet surfaces has been a challenge for centuries, yet this problem has been solved multiple times during the evolution of sessile aquatic organisms
SUMMARY Differences in ionic strength, pH, temperature, shear forces, and other environmental factors impact adhesion, and organisms have evolved various strategies to optimize their adhesins for their specific environmental conditions
We show that the holdfast polysaccharide deacetylase HfsH plays an important role in adherence in high-ionic-strength environments
Summary
The development of adhesives that perform well on wet surfaces has been a challenge for centuries, yet this problem has been solved multiple times during the evolution of sessile aquatic organisms. Mussels, a diverse group of bivalve mollusk species, can attach to surfaces in freshwater, brackish waters, and marine habitats, suggesting a successful evolution of adhesion mechanisms adapted to different ionic environments (Maier et al, 2015; Waite, 2017). Both marine and freshwater mussels produce a fibrous polymeric adhesin structure called the byssus for surface attachment (Maier et al, 2015; Waite, 2017). Despite the impressive progress in understanding the mechanistic basis for mussel adhesion in different-ionic-strength environments, the lack of a genetic system has made it difficult to study the evolution of those mechanisms
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