Abstract

In this research, antibiotic-producing bacteria, Streptomyces coelicolor (S. coelicolor) M145, was exposed to copper oxide (CuO) particles to investigate the effects of nano-particles (NPs) on antibiotic production. Results showed that a higher yield of antibiotics was obtained with smaller particle sizes of CuO NPs. When exposed to 10 mg/L of 40 nm CuO NPs, the maximum amount of actinorhodin (ACT) obtained was 2.6 mg/L after 144 h, which was 2.0-fold greater than that of control. However, the process was inhibited when the concentration of CuO NPs was increased to higher than 20 mg/L. Transcriptome analysis showed that all the genes involved in the ACT cluster were significantly up-regulated after exposure to 10 mg/L NPs, which could be the direct cause of the increase of ACT production. Additionally, some genes related to the generation of acetyl-coA were up-regulated. In this way, CuO NPs led to an increase of secondary metabolites. The mechanism related to these changes indicated that nano-particle‒induced ROS and Cu2+ played synergetic roles in promoting ACT biosynthesis. This is a first report suggesting that CuO NPs had a significant effect on antibiotic production, which will be helpful in understanding the mechanism of antibiotic production in nature.

Highlights

  • Streptomyces is a gram-positive bacterium, which is widely relevant as it can currently produce two thirds of antibiotics used in clinical settings[1]

  • The relative abundance of viable bacteria was 84.4% of control (Fig. 1b). This suggested that CuO NPs caused some toxicity to bacteria, they could improve the ability of antibiotic production of individual cells at lower concentrations

  • When CuO NPs concentration reached 20 mg/L, the ACT yield was 0.76-fold of control at 144 h, while the relative abundance of viable bacteria was 78.9% of control, which meant that with higher concentration of NPs, the ability of antibiotic production of individual cells decreased

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Summary

Introduction

Streptomyces is a gram-positive bacterium, which is widely relevant as it can currently produce two thirds of antibiotics used in clinical settings[1]. Antibiotic production of M145 is controlled by many factors, such as transcriptional regulators, proposed coupling of antibiotic synthesis and resistance genes[7], nutritional and metabolic status[8,9], and so on. These regulatory mechanisms are affected by external environment, such as variations in culture conditions and the addition of different factors to the culture medium[10]. Nanoparticles have been widely reported to have toxic effects on microorganisms; there are few reports on whether NPs could affect the secondary metabolites of microbes. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon were investigated by analysing the roles of reactive oxygen species (ROS)

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