Antibiotics stimulate protein transfer to persister cells
Abstract
The exchange of biological matter between bacterial cells drives adaptation and evolution. However, whether bacteria can exchange functional proteins remains unclear. In this work, we found that antibiotic treatment can induce vesicle-mediated horizontal protein transfer within and between bacterial species. We developed a genetic system in Escherichia coli to track transfer events and performed single-cell transcriptomic profiling on an isogenic population of bacteria. Antibiotics stimulated the differentiation of this isogenic population into distinct cell states: donor cells that activated a membrane stress response to release protein-containing vesicles and recipient cells that suppressed this response to acquire protein from their neighbors. Protein uptake enhanced the antibiotic persistence of recipient cells, revealing that vesicle exchange promotes bacterial survival during antibiotic treatment.
Article Details
Journal Info
Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Authors (16)
Alice X. Wen
Julia Bos
Institut Pasteur, Unité Plasticité du Génome Bactérien, Université Paris Cité, CNRS UMR3525, Paris, France.
Debojyoti Panda
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Katelin M. Hagstrom
Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Shubham Singh
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Shrawan Kumar Mageswaran
Institute of Structural Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Xiaoli Wang
Center for Precision Environmental Health, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Bo Hu
Kobie T. Welch
Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Matthew B. Cooke
Jennifer A. Halliday
Laura Deus Ramirez
Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Antoinette E. Martinez
Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Yi-Wei Chang
Institute of Structural Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
David A. Weitz
Christophe Herman