Aquaculture Reports (Jul 2021)

FucP promotes the pathogenicity of Edwardsiella piscicida to infect zebrafish

  • Xinya Zhang,
  • Maocang Yan,
  • Cuimin Mu,
  • Jiayan Wu,
  • Jiakang Chen,
  • Guangchen Pan,
  • Xuepeng Wang

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 20
p. 100665

Abstract

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Edwardsiella piscicida (E. piscicida) is an important zoonotic pathogen that mostly infects fish by colonizing the intestine. Fucose within the intestine could regulate the pathogenicity of some intestinal pathogens. Here we identified the function of fucose permease in E. piscicida and its physiological influence. The results showed that E. piscicida grew faster in the presence of l-fucose. The fucose permease gene fucP mutant strain ΔfucP significantly decreased penetration and motility in mucin compared with the wild-type strain. The gene expression levels of esaB, esaD, esaL and esaK in ΔfucP had significantly downregulated when compared with the wild-type strain. Most importantly, the survival rate of zebrafish after being infected with ΔfucP was significantly higher than those of the wild type. In a word, fucose promoted the growth and motility of E. piscicida and the fucP gene mutant decreased the pathogenicity of E. piscicida in zebrafish.

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