TY - JOUR AU - Xiong, Lifeng AU - Teng, Jade LL AU - Watt, Rory M. AU - Kan, Biao AU - Lau, Susanna KP AU - Woo, Patrick CY PY - 2014 DA - 2014/02/17 TI - Arginine deiminase pathway is far more important than urease for acid resistance and intracellular survival in Laribacter hongkongensis: a possible result of arc gene cassette duplication JO - BMC Microbiology SP - 42 VL - 14 IS - 1 AB - Laribacter hongkongensis is a Gram-negative, urease-positive bacillus associated with invasive bacteremic infections in liver cirrhosis patients and fish-borne community-acquired gastroenteritis and traveler’s diarrhea. Its mechanisms of adaptation to various environmental niches and host defense evasion are largely unknown. During the process of analyzing the L. hongkongensis genome, a complete urease cassette and two adjacent arc gene cassettes were found. We hypothesize that the urease cassette and/or the arc gene cassettes are important for L. hongkongensis to survive in acidic environment and macrophages. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by constructing single, double and triple non-polar deletion mutants of the urease and two arc gene cassettes of L. hongkongensis using the conjugation-mediated gene deletion system and examining their effects in acidic environment in vitro, in macrophages and in a mouse model. SN - 1471-2180 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-14-42 DO - 10.1186/1471-2180-14-42 ID - Xiong2014 ER -