RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Autotransporters drive biofilm formation and auto-aggregation in the diderm Firmicute Veillonella parvula JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.04.15.042101 DO 10.1101/2020.04.15.042101 A1 Nathalie Béchon A1 Alicia Jiménez-Fernández A1 Jerzy Witwinowski A1 Emilie Bierque A1 Najwa Taib A1 Thomas Cokelaer A1 Laurence Ma A1 Jean-Marc Ghigo A1 Simonetta Gribaldo A1 Christophe Beloin YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/16/2020.04.15.042101.abstract AB The Negativicutes are a clade of Firmicutes that have retained the ancestral diderm character and possess an outer membrane. One of the best studied Negativicute, Veillonella parvula, is an anaerobic commensal and opportunistic pathogen inhabiting complex human microbial communities, including the gut and the dental plaque microbiota. Whereas adhesion and biofilm capacity of V. parvula is expected to be crucial for its maintenance and development in these environments, studies of V. parvula adhesion have been hindered by the lack of efficient genetic tools to perform functional analyses in this bacterium. Here, we took advantage of a recently described naturally transformable V. parvula isolate, SKV38, and adapted tools developed for the closely related Clostridia spp. to perform random transposon and targeted mutagenesis to identify V. parvula genes involved in biofilm formation. We show that type V secreted autotransporters -typically found in diderm bacteria-are the main determinants of V. parvula auto-aggregation and biofilm formation, which compete with each other for binding either to cells or to surfaces, with strong consequences on V. parvula biofilm formation capacity. We also show that inactivation of the gene coding for a poorly characterized metal-dependent phosphohydrolase HD domain protein conserved in the Firmicutes and their closely related diderm phyla inhibits autotransporter-mediated biofilm formation. This study paves the way for further molecular characterization of V. parvula interactions with other bacteria and the host within complex microbiota environments.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.