Virulence factor modulating (VFM) is a quorum sensing (QS) signal shared by and specific to Dickeya bacteria, regulating the production of plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs) and virulence of Dickeya. High polarity and trace of VFM signal increase the difficulty of signal separation and structure identification, and thus limit the development of quorum quenching strategy to biocontrol bacterial soft rot diseases caused by Dickeya. In order to high-throughput screen VFM quenching bacteria, a vfmE-gfp biosensor VR2 (VFM Reporter) sensitive to VFM signal was first constructed. Subsequently, two bacterial strains with high quenching efficiency were screened out by fluorescence intensity measurement and identified as Pseudomonas chlororaphis L5 and Enterobacter asburiae L95 using multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA). L5 and L95 supernatants reduced the expression of vfm genes, and both strains also decreased the production of PCWDEs of D. zeae MS2 and significantly reduced the virulence of D. oryzae EC1 on rice seedlings, D. zeae MS2 on banana seedlings, D. dadantii 3937 on potato and D. fangzhongdai CL3 on taro. Findings in this study provide a method to high-throughput screen VFM quenching bacteria and characterize novel functions of P. chlororaphis and E. asburiae in biocontrolling plant diseases through quenching VFM QS signal.
© 2023 The Authors. Microbial Biotechnology published by Applied Microbiology International and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.