Abstract
BackgroundAeromonas veronii is a bacterial pathogen in aquaculture, which produces virulence factors to enable it colonize and evade host immune defense. Given that experimental verification of virulence factors is time-consuming and laborious, few virulence factors have been characterized. Moreover, most studies have only focused on single virulence factors, resulting in biased interpretation of the pathogenesis of A. veronii.ResultsIn this study, a PPI network at genome-wide scale for A. veronii was first constructed followed by prediction and mapping of virulence factors on the network. When topological characteristics were analyzed, the virulence factors had higher degree and betweenness centrality than other proteins in the network. In particular, the virulence factors tended to interact with each other and were enriched in two network modules. One of the modules mainly consisted of histidine kinases, response regulators, diguanylate cyclases and phosphodiesterases, which play important roles in two-component regulatory systems and the synthesis and degradation of cyclic-diGMP. Construction of the interspecies PPI network between A. veronii and its host Oreochromis niloticus revealed that the virulence factors interacted with homologous proteins in the host. Finally, the structures and interacting sites of the virulence factors during interaction with host proteins were predicted.ConclusionsThe findings here indicate that the virulence factors probably regulate the virulence of A. veronii by involving in signal transduction pathway and manipulate host biological processes by mimicking and binding competitively to host proteins. Our results give more insight into the pathogenesis of A. veronii and provides important information for designing targeted antibacterial drugs.
Highlights
Aeromonas veronii is a bacterial pathogen in aquaculture, which produces virulence factors to enable it colonize and evade host immune defense
Most Protein-protein interaction (PPI) (79.74%) were derived from the model organism E. coli, with only 0.47% constituting the A. veronii PPIs derived from A. thaliana
The A. veronii PPI network was of acceptable reliability To evaluate the quality of the A. veronii PPI network, 1000 random networks were generated
Summary
Aeromonas veronii is a bacterial pathogen in aquaculture, which produces virulence factors to enable it colonize and evade host immune defense. On the other hand, secreted virulence factors play more important roles, as they can be delivered from pathogen cells into host cells or host environment [7, 8], allowing them to interact with host proteins to directly participate in host biological processes. Zheng et al accurately identified the virulence factors of six species by integrating PPI networks and known virulence factors [10]. Integration of PPI networks, known virulence factors, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways allowed Cui et al to identify virulence factors of three species [9]. Since different modules act synergetically to fulfill cellular functions, construction of PPI networks can assist in identifying key proteins and understanding pathogenic mechanisms from a systems perspective [15]. A. veronii PPI network at genome-wide scale is still not available
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