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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1432475
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring the Depths: Marine-Derived Antimicrobials as New Frontiers in Combating Antimicrobial Resistance View all 3 articles

Bioprospecting of Inhibitors of EPEC virulence from Metabolites of Marine Actinobacteria from the Arctic Sea

Provisionally accepted
Tuomas Pylkkö Tuomas Pylkkö 1Yannik K. Schneider Yannik K. Schneider 2Teppo Rämä Teppo Rämä 2Jeanette H. Andersen Jeanette H. Andersen 2Päivi Tammela Päivi Tammela 1*
  • 1 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
  • 2 UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Troms, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A considerable number of antibacterial agents are derived from bacterial metabolites. Similarly, numerous known compounds that impede bacterial virulence stem from bacterial metabolites. Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) is a notable human pathogen causing intestinal infections, particularly affecting infant mortality in developing regions. These infections are characterized by microvilli effacement and intestinal epithelial lesions linked with aberrant actin polymerization. This study aimed to identify potential antivirulence compounds for EPEC infections among bacterial metabolites harvested from marine actinobacteria (Kocuria sp. and Rhodococcus spp.) from the Arctic Sea by the application of virulence-based screening assays. Moreover, we demonstrate the suitability of these antivirulence assays to screen actinobacteria extract fractions for the bioassayguided identification of metabolites. We discovered a compound in the fifth fraction of a Kocuria strain that interferes with EPEC-induced actin polymerization without affecting growth. Furthermore, a growth-inhibiting compound was identified in the fifth fraction of a Rhodococcus strain. Our findings include the bioassay-guided identification, HPLC-MS-based dereplication, and isolation of a large phospholipid and a likely antimicrobial peptide, demonstrating the usefulness of this approach in screening for compounds capable of inhibiting EPEC virulence.

    Keywords: Antivirulence, EPEC, Arctic marine microorganisms, bioprospecting Heading 2, Indent: Left: 0 cm, Tab stops: Not at 2.25 cm Charpentier X, Oswald E. Identification of the secretion

    Received: 14 May 2024; Accepted: 28 Jun 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pylkkö, Schneider, Rämä, Andersen and Tammela. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Päivi Tammela, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

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