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Infection and Immunity, September 2004, p. 5478-5482, Vol. 72, No. 9
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.9.5478-5482.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Competitive Growth Advantage of Nontoxigenic Mutants in the Stationary Phase in Archival Cultures of Pathogenic Vibrio cholerae Strains

Kalidas Paul, Amalendu Ghosh, Nilanjan Sengupta,{dagger} and Rukhsana Chowdhury*

Biophysics Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Calcutta, India

Received 25 February 2004/ Returned for modification 18 May 2004/ Accepted 10 June 2004

Spontaneous nontoxigenic mutants of highly pathogenic Vibrio cholerae O1 strains accumulate in large numbers during long-term storage of the cultures in agar stabs. In these mutants, production of the transcriptional regulator ToxR was reduced due to the presence of a mutation in the ribosome-binding site immediately upstream of the toxR open reading frame. Consequently, the ToxR-dependent virulence regulon was turned off, with concomitant reduction in the expression of cholera toxin and toxin-coregulated pilus. An intriguing feature of these mutants is that they have a competitive fitness advantage when grown in competition with the parent strains in stationary-phase cocultures which is independent of RpoS, the only locus known to be primarily associated with acquisition of a growth advantage phenotype in bacteria.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Biophysics Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4 Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Calcutta 700 032, India. Phone: 91 33 2473 0350. Fax: 91 33 2473 5197. E-mail: rukhsana{at}iicb.res.in.

Editor: V. J. DiRita

{dagger} Present address: Department of Interdisciplinary Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla.

Infection and Immunity, September 2004, p. 5478-5482, Vol. 72, No. 9
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.9.5478-5482.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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