The broad-spectrum antibiotic, zeamine, kills the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans

Frontiers in Microbiology
Josephine E E U HellbergGeorge P C Salmond

Abstract

Soil bacteria can be prolific producers of secondary metabolites and other biologically active compounds of economic and clinical importance. These natural products are often synthesized by large multi-enzyme complexes such as polyketide synthases (PKSs) or non-ribosomal peptide synthases (NRPSs). The plant-associated Gram-negative bacterium, Serratia plymuthica A153, produces several secondary metabolites and is capable of killing the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans; a commonly used model for the study of bacterial virulence. In this study, we show that disruption of the hybrid PKS/NRPS zeamine (zmn) gene cluster results in the attenuation of "fast-killing" of C. elegans, indicating that zeamine has nematicidal activity. C. elegans also exhibits age-dependent susceptibility to zeamine, with younger worms being most sensitive to the bioactive molecule. The zmn gene cluster is widely distributed within Serratia and phytopathogenic Dickeya species and investigation of strains harboring the zmn gene cluster showed that several of them are highly virulent in C. elegans. Zeamine was described previously as a phytotoxin and broad-spectrum antibacterial compound. In addition to its nematicidal properties, we show here that zeamin...Continue Reading

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Apr 3, 2014·Longevity & Healthspan·Jeffrey A StuartEllen L Robb
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Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR
amplicon sequencing

Software Mentioned

Glimmer
wgVISTA
GraphPad
Prism

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