Carbon catabolite repression in pectin digestion by phytopathogen Dickeya dadantii

Abstract

The catabolism of pectin from the plant cell walls plays a crucial role in the virulence of the phytopathogen Dickeya dadantii. In particular, the timely expression of pel genes encoding major pectate lyases is essential to circumvent the plant defense systems and induce a massive pectinolytic activity during the maceration phase. While previous studies identified the role of a positive feedback loop specific to the pectin degradation pathway, here we show that the pel expression pattern is controlled by a metabolic switch between glucose and pectin. We develop a dynamical and quantitative regulatory model of this process integrating the two main regulators CRP and KdgR related to these two sources of carbon, and reproducing the concentration profiles of the associated metabolites, cAMP and KDG respectively, quantified using a new HPLC method. The model involves only 5 adjustable parameters, and recapitulates the dynamics of these metabolic pathways during bacterial growth together with the regulatory events occurring at the promoters of two major pel genes, pelE and pelD. It highlights their activity as an instance of carbon catabolite repression occurring at the transcriptional regulatory level, and directly related to the virulence of D. dadantii. The model also shows that quantitative differences in the binding properties of common regulators at these two promoters resulted in a qualitative different role of pelD and pelE in the metabolic switch, and also likely in conditions of infection, explaining their evolutionary conservation as separate genes in this species.