Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1099/mic.0.001479

Publication Title

Microbiology

Volume

170

Issue

7

Pages

001479 (1-13)

Abstract

The bacterial stringent response (SR) is a conserved transcriptional reprogramming pathway mediated by the nucleotide signalling alarmones, (pp)pGpp. The SR has been implicated in antibiotic survival in Clostridioides difficile, a biofilm- and spore-forming pathogen that causes resilient, highly recurrent C. difficile infections. The role of the SR in other processes and the effectors by which it regulates C. difficile physiology are unknown. C. difficile RelQ is a clostridial alarmone synthetase. Deletion of relQ dysregulates C. difficile growth in unstressed conditions, affects susceptibility to antibiotic and oxidative stressors and drastically reduces biofilm formation. While wild-type C. difficile displays increased biofilm formation in the presence of sublethal stress, the ΔrelQ strain cannot upregulate biofilm production in response to stress. Deletion of relQ slows spore accumulation in planktonic cultures but accelerates it in biofilms. This work establishes biofilm formation and spore accumulation as alarmone-mediated processes in C. difficile and reveals the importance of RelQ in stress-induced biofilm regulation.

Rights

© 2024 The Authors.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Original Publication Citation

Malik, A., Oludiran, A., Poudel, A., Alvarez, O. B., Woodward, C., & Purcell, E. B. (2024). RelQ-mediated alarmone signalling regulates growth, stress-induced biofilm formation and spore accumulation in Clostridioides difficile. Microbiology, 170(7), 1-13, Article 001479. https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001479

ORCID

0009-0006-9005-2438 (Malik), 0000-0002-8736-0433 (Purcell)

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