Broadly conserved FlgV controls flagellar assembly and Borrelia burgdorferi dissemination in mice

Maxime Zamba-Campero, Daniel Soliman, Huaxin Yu, Amanda G. Lasseter, Yuen-Yan Chang, Julia L. Silberman, Jun Liu, L. Aravind, Mollie W. Jewett, Gisela Storz and Philip P. Adams ()
Additional contact information
Maxime Zamba-Campero: National Institutes of Health
Daniel Soliman: National Institutes of Health
Huaxin Yu: Yale School of Medicine
Amanda G. Lasseter: University of Central Florida College of Medicine
Yuen-Yan Chang: National Institutes of Health
Julia L. Silberman: National Institutes of Health
Jun Liu: Yale School of Medicine
L. Aravind: National Institutes of Health
Mollie W. Jewett: University of Central Florida College of Medicine
Gisela Storz: National Institutes of Health
Philip P. Adams: National Institutes of Health

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Abstract Flagella propel pathogens through their environments, yet are expensive to synthesize and are immunogenic. Thus, complex hierarchical regulatory networks control flagellar gene expression. Spirochetes are highly motile bacteria, but peculiarly, the archetypal flagellar regulator σ28 is absent in the Lyme spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Here, we show that gene bb0268 (flgV) in B. burgdorferi, previously and incorrectly annotated to encode the RNA-binding protein Hfq, is instead a structural flagellar component that modulates flagellar assembly. The flgV gene is broadly conserved in the flagellar superoperon alongside σ28 in many Spirochaetae, Firmicutes and other phyla, with distant homologs in Epsilonproteobacteria. We find that B. burgdorferi FlgV is localized within flagellar basal bodies, and strains lacking flgV produce fewer and shorter flagellar filaments and are defective in cell division and motility. During the enzootic cycle, flgV-deficient B. burgdorferi survive and replicate in Ixodes ticks but are attenuated for infection and dissemination in mice. Our work defines infection timepoints when spirochete motility is most crucial and implicates FlgV as a broadly distributed structural flagellar component that modulates flagellar assembly.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54806-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-54806-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54806-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().