Small RNA Profiling in Mycobacterium Provides Insights Into Stress Adaptability

Yingyu Chen; Wenjun Zhai; Kailun Zhang; Han Liu; Tingting Zhu; Li Su; Luiz Bermudez; Huanchun Chen; Aizhen Guo

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.752537

Small RNA Profiling in Mycobacterium Provides Insights Into Stress Adaptability

Front Microbiol. 2021 Nov 4:12:752537. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.752537. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yingyu Chen^{1

2}, Wenjun Zhai^{1

2}, Kailun Zhang^{1

2}, Han Liu^{1

2}, Tingting Zhu^{1

2}, Li Su^{1

2}, Luiz Bermudez³, Huanchun Chen^{1

2}, Aizhen Guo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
² National Animal Tuberculosis Para-Reference Laboratory (Wuhan) of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
³ Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States.

Abstract

Mycobacteria encounter a number of environmental changes during infection and respond using different mechanisms. Small RNA (sRNA) is a post-transcriptionally regulatory system for gene functions and has been investigated in many other bacteria. This study used Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) infection models and sequenced whole bacterial RNAs before and after host cell infection. A comparison of differentially expressed sRNAs using Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and target prediction was carried out. Six pathogenically relevant stress conditions, growth rate, and morphology were used to screen and identify sRNAs. From these data, a subset of sRNAs was differentially expressed in multiple infection groups and stress conditions. Many were found associated with lipid metabolism. Among them, ncBCG427 was significantly downregulated when BCG entered into macrophages and was associated with increased biofilm formation. The reduction of virulence possibility depends on regulating lipid metabolism.

Keywords: Mycobacterium bovis; Mycobacterium bovis BCG; mycobacteria; sRNA; stress.