Abstract

Spontaneous nontoxigenic mutants of highly pathogenic Vibrio cholerae O1 strains accumulate in large numbers during long-term storage of the cultures in agar stabs. In these mutants, production of the transcriptional regulator ToxR was reduced due to the presence of a mutation in the ribosome-binding site immediately upstream of the toxR open reading frame. Consequently, the ToxR-dependent virulence regulon was turned off, with concomitant reduction in the expression of cholera toxin and toxin-coregulated pilus. An intriguing feature of these mutants is that they have a competitive fitness advantage when grown in competition with the parent strains in stationary-phase cocultures which is independent of RpoS, the only locus known to be primarily associated with acquisition of a growth advantage phenotype in bacteria.

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