Visualization of Twitching Motility and Characterization of the Role of the PilG in Xylella fastidiosa
Authors
Description
Xylella fastidiosa is a Gram-negative non-flagellated bacterium that causes a number of economically important diseases of plants. The twitching motility provides X. fastidiosa a means for long-distance intra-plant movement and colonization, contributing toward pathogenicity in X. fastidiosa. The twitching motility of X. fastidiosa is operated by type IV pili. Type IV pili of Xylella fastidiosa are regulated by pilG, a chemotaxis regulator in Pil-Chp operon encoding proteins that are involved with signal transduction pathways. To elucidate the roles of pilG in the twitching motility of X. fastidiosa, a pilG-deficient mutant Xf Delta pilG and its complementary strain Xf Delta pilG-C containing native pilG were developed. A microfluidic chambers integrated with a time-lapse image recording system was used to observe twitching motility in Xf Delta pilG, Xf Delta pilG-C and its wild type strain. Using this recording system, it permits long-term spatial and temporal observations of aggregation, migration of individual cells and populations of bacteria via twitching motility. X. fastidiosa wild type and complementary Xf Delta pilG-C strain showed typical twitching motility characteristics directly observed in the microfluidic flow chambers, whereas mutant Xf Delta pliG exhibited the twitching deficient phenotype. This study demonstrates that pilG contributes to the twitching motility of X. fastidiosa. The microfluidic flow chamber is used as a means for observing twitching motility.