M.M and C.R). The authors declare no conflict of interest. “
“High concentrations of indole are known to be toxic to cells due to perturbations in membrane potential. Here, we report for the first time a transcriptome analysis of a soil model bacterium,

Pseudomonas putida KT2440, under indole treatment. We demonstrated that 47 genes are differentially expressed, including PI3K inhibitor 11 genes involved in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle) and 12 genes involved in chaperone and protease functions (hslV, hslU, htpG, grpE, dnaK, ibpA, groEL, groES, clpB, lon-1, lon-2, and hflk). Mutant analysis supported the observation that protease genes including hslU are essential for the indole resistance of Pseudomonas strains. Subsequent biochemical analyses have shown that indole increases the NADH/NAD+ ratio and decreases the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration inside cells, due to membrane perturbation and higher expression of TCA cycle genes in the presence of indole. This energy reduction

leads to a reduction in cell size and an enhancement of biofilm formation in P. putida. The observed upregulation in many chaperones and proteases led us to speculate that protein folding might be inhibited by indole treatment. Interestingly, our in vitro protein-refolding assay using malate dehydrogenase with purified GroEL/GroES demonstrated that indole interferes with protein folding. Taken together, our data provide new evidence that indole causes toxicity to P. putida by inhibiting cellular energy production and protein folding. “
“Streptococcus sanguinis, learn more a normal inhabitant of the human oral cavity, is a common streptococcal species implicated in infective endocarditis. Herein, we investigated the effects of infection with S. sanguinis on foam cell formation and cell death of macrophages. Infection with S. sanguinis stimulated foam cell formation of THP-1, a human macrophage cell line. At a multiplicity of

infection >100, S. sanguinis-induced cell death Thymidine kinase of the macrophages. Viable bacterial infection was required to trigger cell death because heat-inactivated S. sanguinis did not induce cell death. The production of cytokines interleukin-1β and tumor necrosis factor-α from macrophages was also stimulated during bacterial infection. Inhibition of the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) resulted in reduced cell death, suggesting an association of ROS with cell death. Furthermore, S. sanguinis-induced cell death appeared to be independent of activation of inflammasomes, because cleavage of procaspase-1 was not evident in infected macrophages. Streptococcus sanguinis is a member of the viridans streptococci and a primary colonizer of the human oral cavity (Kolenbrander & London, 1993; Nobbs et al., 2009).