Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Boston, MA, United States
Oihane Irazoki
The laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Jonathon Blake
Genomics Core Facility, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany
Benjamin R Warner
Department of Microbiology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States; Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States
Alyson R Warr
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Boston, MA, United States
Anju Bala
The laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Vladimir Benes
Genomics Core Facility, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Boston, MA, United States
Kurt Fredrick
Department of Microbiology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States; Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States
Adaptation to shifting temperatures is crucial for the survival of the bacterial pathogen Vibrio cholerae. Here, we show that colony rugosity, a biofilm-associated phenotype, is regulated by temperature in V. cholerae strains that naturally lack the master biofilm transcriptional regulator HapR. Using transposon-insertion mutagenesis, we found the V. cholerae ortholog of BipA, a conserved ribosome-associated GTPase, is critical for this temperature-dependent phenomenon. Proteomic analyses revealed that loss of BipA alters the synthesis of >300 proteins in V. cholerae at 22°C, increasing the production of biofilm-related proteins including the key transcriptional activators VpsR and VpsT, as well as proteins important for diverse cellular processes. At low temperatures, BipA protein levels increase and are required for optimal ribosome assembly in V. cholerae, suggesting that control of BipA abundance is a mechanism by which bacteria can remodel their proteomes. Our study reveals a remarkable new facet of V. cholerae’s complex biofilm regulatory network.
