Adhesion preference of the sticky bacterium Acinetobacter sp. Tol 5

Shogo Yoshimoto; Satoshi Ishii; Ayane Kawashiri; Taishi Matsushita; Dirk Linke; Stephan Göttig; Volkhard A J Kempf; Madoka Takai; Katsutoshi Hori

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2024.1342418

Adhesion preference of the sticky bacterium Acinetobacter sp. Tol 5

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2024 Feb 5:12:1342418. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1342418. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Shogo Yoshimoto¹, Satoshi Ishii¹, Ayane Kawashiri¹, Taishi Matsushita², Dirk Linke³, Stephan Göttig⁴, Volkhard A J Kempf⁴, Madoka Takai², Katsutoshi Hori¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomolecular Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan.
² Department of Bioengineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
³ Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
⁴ Institute for Medical Microbiology and Infection Control, University Hospital, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.

Abstract

Gram-negative bacterium Acinetobacter sp. Tol 5 exhibits high adhesiveness to various surfaces of general materials, from hydrophobic plastics to hydrophilic glass and metals, via AtaA, an Acinetobacter trimeric autotransporter adhesin Although the adhesion of Tol 5 is nonspecific, Tol 5 cells may have prefer materials for adhesion. Here, we examined the adhesion of Tol 5 and other bacteria expressing different TAAs to various materials, including antiadhesive surfaces. The results highlighted the stickiness of Tol 5 through the action of AtaA, which enabled Tol 5 cells to adhere even to antiadhesive materials, including polytetrafluoroethylene with a low surface free energy, a hydrophilic polymer brush with steric hindrance, and mica with an ultrasmooth surface. Single-cell force spectroscopy as an atomic force microscopy technique revealed the strong cell adhesion force of Tol 5 to these antiadhesive materials. Nevertheless, Tol 5 cells showed a weak adhesion force toward a zwitterionic 2-methacryloyloxyethyl-phosphorylcholine (MPC) polymer-coated surface. Dynamic flow chamber experiments revealed that Tol 5 cells, once attached to the MPC polymer-coated surface, were exfoliated by weak shear stress. The underlying adhesive mechanism was presumed to involve exchangeable, weakly bound water molecules. Our results will contribute to the understanding and control of cell adhesion of Tol 5 for immobilized bioprocess applications and other TAA-expressing pathogenic bacteria of medical importance.

Keywords: Acinetobacter; adhesion; antiadhesive materials; autotransporters; bacteria.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (Grant Numbers JP17H01345, JP18K14062, JP21H05227) to SY and KH, by the Research Council of Norway (grant 331752) to DL, and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG research group 2251) to SG and VK.