Abstract
Burkholderia gladioli is a bacterium with a broad ecology spanning disease in humans, animals and plants, but also encompassing multiple beneficial interactions. It is a plant pathogen, a toxin-producing food-poisoning agent, and causes lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). Contrasting beneficial traits include antifungal production exploited by insects to protect their eggs, plant protective abilities and antibiotic biosynthesis. We explored the genomic diversity and specialized metabolic potential of 206 B. gladioli strains, phylogenomically defining 5 clades. Historical disease pathovars (pv.) B. gladioli pv. allicola and B. gladioli pv. cocovenenans were distinct, while B. gladioli pv. gladioli and B. gladioli pv. agaricicola were indistinguishable; soft-rot disease and CF infection were conserved across all pathovars. Biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) for toxoflavin, caryoynencin and enacyloxin were dispersed across B. gladioli , but bongkrekic acid and gladiolin production were clade-specific. Strikingly, 13 % of CF infection strains characterized were bongkrekic acid-positive, uniquely linking this food-poisoning toxin to this aspect of B. gladioli disease. Mapping the population biology and metabolite production of B. gladioli has shed light on its diverse ecology, and by demonstrating that the antibiotic trimethoprim suppresses bongkrekic acid production, a potential therapeutic strategy to minimize poisoning risk in CF has been identified.
Highlights
The genus Burkholderia contains important plant, animal and human pathogenic bacteria [1, 2], as well as environmentally beneficial species [3]
Twelve strains were from environmental sources including pathovar reference isolates as follows: isolates of plant disease-associated B. gladioli pv. gladioli (n=3), pv. agaricicola (n=3) and pv. alliicola (n=3), and B. gladioli pv. cocovenenans (n=2) toxin-producing strains
The specialized metabolites produced by Burkholderia have been studied extensively and multiple compounds have been shown to be functional in different ecological settings [15]
Summary
The genus Burkholderia contains important plant, animal and human pathogenic bacteria [1, 2], as well as environmentally beneficial species [3]. While the potential for patient-to-patient spread and rapid clinical decline are identified traits of B. cepacia complex infection in people with CF [2], the population biology, epidemiology and genomics of B. gladioli as a lung pathogen are essentially unknown
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