AUTHOR=Wang Dan , Li Hong , Ma Xiang , Tang Yanqiong , Tang Hongqian , Huang Dongyi , Lin Min , Liu Zhu 

TITLE=Hfq Regulates Efflux Pump Expression and Purine Metabolic Pathway to Increase Trimethoprim Resistance in Aeromonas veronii

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.742114

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2021.742114

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Aeromonas veronii (A. veronii</italic>) is a zoonotic pathogen. It causes clinically a variety of diseases such as dysentery, bacteremia, and meningitis, and brings huge losses to aquaculture. <italic>A. veronii</italic> has been documented as a multiple antibiotic resistant bacterium. Hfq (host factor for RNA bacteriophage Qβ replication) participates in the regulations of the virulence, adhesion, and nitrogen fixation, effecting on the growth, metabolism synthesis and stress resistance in bacteria. The deletion of <italic>hfq</italic> gene in <italic>A. veronii</italic> showed more sensitivity to trimethoprim, accompanying by the upregulations of purine metabolic genes and downregulations of efflux pump genes by transcriptomic data analysis. Coherently, the complementation of efflux pump-related genes <italic>acrA</italic> and <italic>acrB</italic> recovered the trimethoprim resistance in Δ<italic>hfq</italic>. Besides, the accumulations of adenosine and guanosine were increased in Δ<italic>hfq</italic> in metabonomic data. The strain Δ<italic>hfq</italic> conferred more sensitive to trimethoprim after appending 1 mM guanosine to M9 medium, while wild type was not altered. These results demonstrated that Hfq mediated trimethoprim resistance by elevating efflux pump expression and degrading adenosine, and guanosine metabolites. Collectively, Hfq is a potential target to tackle trimethoprim resistance in <italic>A. veronii</italic> infection.</p>