The recalcitrant nature of specific toxigenic and non-toxigenic strains of
Vibrio spp. can be problematic in treating severe cases of clinical infections
[17]. In general, bacterial resistance to antimicrobial agents falls into several categories
[18]. These microbial mechanisms include the formation of biofilms, which can permit communication between various species and, thus, facilitate the development of persister cells
[19]. Biofilm communities harbor multiple microbial species enclosed within polymeric matrix systems. These biofilms are frequently associated with various surfaces and provide protection from antimicrobial agents. In many cases, microorganisms within biofilms undergo communication using quorum-sensing molecules to alter their biochemical properties. Another common mechanism of bacterial resistance involves the enzymatic alteration of drug targets, such as the ribosome or cell wall synthesizing machinery
[20]. The altered bacterial targets can exhibit reduced antimicrobial drug binding affinities, preventing the growth-inhibiting properties permitting continued microbial growth. Frequently, target alterations result from spontaneous mutation and insertional mutagenesis by mobile genetic elements. Protection of the antimicrobial drug target prevents the binding to cytoplasmic cell growth machinery
[21]. A well-studied target protection system involves the tetracycline ribosomal protection proteins Tet(O) and Tet(M), which are homologous to the elongation factor G (EF-G) of prokaryotic ribosomes. When bound to the 30S ribosomal subunit, Tet(O) and Tet(M) proteins remove or prevent the binding of tetracycline to the A-site of the ribosome, permitting translation to proceed unabated
[22]. The enzymatic-based destruction of antimicrobial agents is an important virulence mechanism
[23]. These resistance systems hydrolytically render antimicrobial agents into inactive forms. Of particular concern are the extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) that cleave the β-lactam functional moieties of cephalosporins, penicillins, and associated β-lactam-harboring drugs. Prevention of antimicrobial permeability to the cytoplasm of bacterial cells represents a well-known drug resistance system
[24]. These resistance determinants are known to reduce the expression of antimicrobial entry systems in the bacterial membrane or inactivate such drug entry proteins by mutation. Similarly, the lipopolysaccharide components of the bacterial cell wall can confer impermeability of extracellularly located antimicrobial agents. The energy-dependent efflux of multiple antimicrobial agents from bacterial cells of the
Vibrio spp. is a widely recognized resistance mechanism
[25,26][25][26]. These active efflux pumps can exploit the energy stored in ATP in primary active transport systems or the energy stored in ion-based electrochemical gradients in secondary active transporters. Many of these secondary active efflux pumps are called antiporters, which exchange drug and ion during transport and have multiple structurally distinct antimicrobial substrates.
2.1. General Mechanisms of Antibiotic Efflux Pumps
Inside bacterial cells of
Vibrio species where the cellular targets for antimicrobial agents reside, the growth inhibitory effects of such intracellularly located drugs are diluted by various solute drug efflux systems
[27]. These solute transport systems actively pump antimicrobial agents to the extracellular milieu, permitting bacteria that harbor these drug efflux pumps to grow and predominate under relatively high concentrations of structurally distinct antimicrobial agents, including those clinically relevant drugs in the chemotherapy of infectious disease
[28]. Active transport of antimicrobial agents across the bacterial membranes represents a critical efflux-based mechanism for pathogen resistance to clinically relevant antibacterial agents
[29].
In primary active transport systems, the energy stored in ATP is utilized by its hydrolysis to actively accumulate their water-soluble substrates on one side of the membrane
[30]. Several species of the
Vibrio genus harbor these primary active drug pump systems, which are described below. Another active transport system involves the biochemical modification of substrate during transport across the membrane, as exemplified by the phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent phosphotransferase system (PTS), also known as group translocation
[31]. While sugar-alcohols and antimicrobial agents are included as substrates for
Vibrio microorganisms
[31[31][32][33],
32,33], such active solute transport systems are utilized to enter bacterial cells.
Likewise,
Vibrio species possess secondary active transport systems for drug efflux, which use the energy stored in the form of ion gradients across the membrane
[34]. These ion-based electrochemical gradients, such as those involving sodium or protons, catalyze the accumulation of antimicrobial agents on one side of the membrane during a translocation process called antiport
[35,36][35][36]. Together, these primary and secondary active transporters in bacteria account for a significant public health concern as mediators of potentially untreatable multidrug-resistant infectious disease-causing bacterial pathogens.
2.3. Efflux Pumps of RND Family in Vibrio Species
The resistance-nodulation-cell division (RND) superfamily of membrane transporters is composed of a tripartite system with an outer membrane protein (OMP), an inner membrane protein (IMP), and a periplasmic membrane fusion protein (MFP)
[44]. Different components of the RND efflux pump are generally encoded on an operon. The proteins work in synergy to extrude a compound outside the cell, and the absence of any single protein of this tripartite system makes it dysfunctional
[45]. IMP is the antiport protein energized by the protons (H
+), while the MFP is an adaptor protein that connects OMP with the IMP
[46,47][46][47]. As a result, the RND pump is organized into a continuous channel that allows direct exportation of the compounds from the cytoplasm to the exterior without entering the periplasmic space, thus making them a very effective drug resistance mechanism for Gram-negative bacteria
[45,47,48,49][45][47][48][49]. The crystal structures AcrAB-TolC proteins of
Escherichia coli [50,51][50][51] and the MexAB-OprM of
Pseudomonas aeruginosa [52,53,54][52][53][54] have helped decipher the structure-function relationships in these RND efflux pumps
[55]. RND pumps are non-specific and extrude structurally diverse and unrelated substrates across the membrane, although RND efflux pumps’ substrates are characteristically lipophilic
[45,55][45][55]. Cationic, anionic, and uncharged substances and substances with multiple ionizable groups are efficiently handled by the RND pumps
[45,55][45][55].
Some of the well-characterized RND efflux pumps from
V. cholerae O1 include VexLM, VexIJK, VexGH, VexEF, VexCD, as well as VexAB and contribute to bile acid and antimicrobial resistance
[56,57,58][56][57][58]. Higher expression of
vexAB and
vexCD genes in the presence of bile substantiates the role of these efflux pumps in bile resistance, and this might positively contribute to successful colonization of the small intestine by
V. cholerae [57,58][57][58]. Genome comparison of
V. cholerae O1 and non-O1 serovars revealed the presence of all but one (VexE) efflux pump in the genome of non-O1 strain PS15
[59]. The TolC OMF is essential for the functioning of most of these efflux pumps. VexAB, VexCD, and VexEF could be expressed in a hypersensitive
E. coli (∆
acrAB, ∆
ydhE,
hsd−, ∆
tolC) background with the help of the TolC outer membrane factor from
V. cholerae (TolC
vc)
[60]. Of these, VexAB and VexEF exhibited a broader substrate range that included multiple antibiotics such as erythromycin, novobiocin, and dyes and detergents, while the efflux activity of VexCD was restricted to bile acids and detergents. Apart from bile salts, certain antibiotics such as ampicillin and novobiocin have been reported as substrates for the VexH pump since the deletion of the
vexH gene in a VexB-deficient
V. cholerae resulted in higher susceptibility to these antibiotics
[58]. VexEF is dependent on the electrochemical gradient of Na
+ ions, unlike all other RND pumps energized by H
+, and was the first such RND efflux pump described from bacteria
[60].
No antibiotic substrates have been identified so far for VexIJK and VexLM pumps
[58,60][58][60]. These efflux pumps might participate in other physiological activities essential for the survival and persistence of
V. cholerae in the host and the environment. It has been shown that VexB, VexD, VexH, and VexK are necessary for intestinal colonization and production of virulence factors such as the cholera toxin (CT) and toxin co-regulated pilus (TCP)
[58]. A majority of RND efflux pumps have bile acid as their substrate, and considering the importance of bile in the physiology of enteric bacteria
[61], the role of these efflux pumps in the virulence gene regulation has been a topic of significant research interest. Before intestinal colonization, resistance against the toxic effect of the bile salts is accomplished by the ToxR-mediated repression of
ompT, which has a negative role in bile salt resistance
[62]. At the same time, ToxR activates the expression of
ompU, and the OmpU-producing strains are more resistant to bile
[63]. The increased efflux of bile salts follows OmpU production and transport by the RND efflux pumps. A
V. cholerae mutant strain lacking all RND efflux pumps exhibited increased susceptibility to bile, decreased cholera toxin production, and an inability to colonize infant mouse small intestines
[57,64][57][64]. Together, this evidence emphasizes the critical role that RND efflux pumps play in antimicrobial resistance and host persistence and virulence of
V. cholerae.
The genome of
V. vulnificus has 11 putative RND efflux pump-encoding genes, three of which (homologues of
V. cholerae VexAB, VexCD, and AcrAB of
E. coli) have been characterized by gene deletion studies
[50]. A study identified the
norM gene in whole-genome sequences of clinical
V. vulnificus isolates
[65]. While a mutant
V. vulnificus lacking the
vexAB homolog was more susceptible to erythromycin, acriflavine, ethidium bromide, and bile acid, deletion of
acrAB homolog resulted in increased sensitivity of acriflavine alone, and
vexCD deletion did not have any effect on the susceptibility to any of the antibiotics, dyes or bile acid
[66]. Two TolC homologs, TolCV1 and TolCV2 in
V. vulnificus, have been involved in resistance to antibiotics and inhibitory dyes.
V. vulnificus mutants lacking TolCV1 and TolCV2 exhibited increased susceptibility to antibiotics novobiocin, erythromycin, and tetracycline, while TolCV1 mutant was also susceptible to DNA intercalating dyes (ethidium bromide, acriflavine) and detergents (bile acids, SDS) and exhibited reduced motility
[67]. The expression of the
tolCV1 and
tolCV2 increased when the bacterium was exposed to antibiotics and other chemicals
[66]. TolCV1 and TolCV2 could partially complement the TolC protein of
E. coli by interacting with the AcrA protein of the AcrAB-TolC efflux system of
E. coli [68]. Although VceC is functionally identical with the TolC and OprM outer membrane factors, they share minimal (<10%) amino acid similarity among them
[69,70][69][70].
The outer membrane component TolC is generally essential for the function of RND efflux pumps irrespective of bacterial species. In certain instances, however, the TolC components of one species cannot functionally replace the TolC of the other. For example, the MICs of antibiotics for VexEF were much higher with TolC from
V. cholerae (TolC
vc) in an
E. coli background, compared to the MICs of VexEF with TolC of
E. coli (TolC
EC) itself, although both share 47% identity and 7% similarity at the amino acid level
[60]. Similarly, the RND efflux pumps of
E. coli could not function with the TolC from
V. parahaemolyticus, suggesting a species-specific preference for the TolC component
[71,72][71][72]. TolC in the
V. cholerae O1 El Tor strain has been reported to play an essential role in the transcription of the ToxR regulon, a finding that emphasizes the importance of efflux pump-mediated regulation of virulence in pathogenic bacteria
[73].