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Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - present
April 2010 - October 2012
April 2008 - April 2010
Education
April 1997 - March 2006
Publications
Publications (202)
Bacterial plasmid incompatibility (Inc) groups, IncP-1 to IncP-14, have long been recognised as R-factors. These factors harbour antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in Pseudomonas species (PIncs). Despite their importance, some PIncs plasmid remain underexplored at the sequence level. This study attempts to address this gap by determining the com...
The global increase in the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria has necessitated the development of alternative treatments that do not rely on conventional antimicrobial agents. Using bacteriophage-derived lytic enzymes in antibacterial therapy shows promise; however, a thorough comparison and evaluation of their bactericidal efficacy are lacking....
Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) are crucial for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria and facilitate their rapid evolution and adaptation. MGEs include plasmids, integrative and conjugative elements, transposons, insertion sequences and bacteriophages. Notably, the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs), which poses a serious threat to...
Tetratostichococcus sp. P1 shows an acidophilic phenotype which could allow mass-scale monoculture of this green microalga without severe contamination by environmental microorganisms. In this study, we report a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Tetratostichococcus sp. P1.
Membrane vesicles (MVs) are small spherical structures (20–400 nm) produced by most bacteria and have important biological functions including toxin delivery, signal transfer, biofilm formation, and immunomodulation of the host. Although MV formation is enhanced in biofilms of a wide range of bacterial species, the underlying mechanisms are not ful...
Plasmids are important vehicles for the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) among bacteria by conjugation. Here, we determined the complete nucleotide sequences of nine different plasmids previously obtained by exogenous plasmid isolation from river and creek sediments and wastewater from a pharmaceutical company. We identified six...
The compound 3-chlorobenzoate (3-CBA) is a hazardous industrial waste product that can harm human health and the environment. This study investigates the physiological and genetic potential for 3-chlorobenzoate (3-CBA) degradation. Six 3-CBA Gram-negative degraders with different degradation properties belonging to the genera Caballeronia, Paraburk...
Nucleotide sequence similarity, including k-mer plasmid composition, has been used for prediction of plasmid evolutionary host range, representing the hosts in which a plasmid has replicated at some point during its evolutionary history. However, the relationships between the bacterial taxa of experimentally identified transconjugants and the predi...
This study presents the reassessment of earlier published data with reference to the article published in Environmental Microbiology entitled "IncP-type plasmids carrying genes for antibiotic resistance or aromatic compound degradation are prevalent in sequenced Aromatoleum and Thauera strains" by Lo et al., 2022. This correspondence clarifies misp...
The aim of this study was to clarify the biological and clinical significance of a tandem duplicate of blaVIM-24 in Pseudomonas aeruginosa ST1816 isolates. Thirteen ST1816 isolates carrying a plasmid harboring blaVIMs were obtained from two medical settings in Japan between 2016 and 2019. Complete sequencing revealed that, of the 13 plasmids, four...
Rhodococcus qingshengii N9T-4 can grow on media without added carbon sources. Here, we report the complete nucleotide sequence of the N9T-4 genome, consisting of a chromosome (6,439,972 bp), a linear plasmid (pN9T4-1 [565,206 bp]), and two circular plasmids (pN9T-4-2 [99,662 bp] and pN9T-4-3 [30,419 bp]).
Various conjugative plasmids were obtained by exogenous plasmid capture, biparental mating, and/or triparental mating methods from different environmental samples in Japan. Based on phylogenetic analyses of their whole-nucleotide sequences, new IncP/P-1 plasmids that could be classified into novel subgroups were obtained. Mini-replicons of the plas...
Rhodococcus erythropolis N9T-4 is a super oligotroph that grows on an inorganic basal medium without any additional carbon and nitrogen sources and requires CO2 for its oligotrophic growth. Previously, we found that two genes, aldA and mnoA, encoding NAD-dependent aliphatic aldehyde dehydrogenase and N,N′-dimethyl-4-nitrosoaniline-dependent methano...
Membrane vesicles (MVs) are released by various prokaryotes and play a role in the delivery of various cell-cell interaction factors. Recent studies have determined that these vesicles are capable of functioning as mediators of horizontal gene transfer. Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) are a type of MV that is released by Gram-negative bacteria and p...
Strain RF1110005T, which was isolated from brackish lake water sampled at Lake Sanaru in Japan as a “filterable” bacterial strain, was characterized as a novel species in the genus Fluviispira, family Silvanigrellaceae, order Silvanigrellales, the class Oligoflexia and the phylum Bdellovibrionota. Cells of RF1110005T were aerobic, Gram stain negati...
The present study showed that syntrophic associations in a defined bacterial consortium, named OPK, containing Mycolicibacterium strains PO1 and PO2, Novosphingobium pentaromativorans PY1 and Bacillus subtilis FW1, led to effective pyrene degradation over a wide range of pH values, temperatures and salinities, as well as in the presence of a second...
The frequency of transconjugants were compared for the incompatibility (Inc) P-1 and P-7 plasmids pBP136 and pCAR1 under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Filter mating assays were performed with one donor strain and one recipient strain using different donors of Pseudomonas and recipient strains, including Pseudomonas, Pantoea, and Buttiauxella. U...
IncP-1 plasmids, first isolated from clinical specimens (R751, RP4), are recognized as important vectors spreading antibiotic resistance genes. The abundance of IncP-1 plasmids in the environment, previously reported, suggested a correlation with anthropogenic pollution. Unexpectedly, qPCR-based detection of IncP-1 plasmids revealed also an increas...
Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) are naturally released from Gram- negative bacteria and play important roles in various biological functions. Released vesicles are not uniform in shape, size, or characteristics, and little is known about this diversity of OMVs. Here, we show that deletion of tolB, which encodes a part of the Tol-Pal system, leads to...
The LitR/CarH family is a new group of photosensor homologous to MerR-type transcriptional regulators. Proteins of this family are distributed to various nonphototrophic bacteria and grouped into at least five classes (I to V). Pseudomonas putida retaining three class II LitR proteins exhibited a genome-wide response to light. All three paralogs we...
Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA that can be horizontally transferred between different bacterial cells by conjugation. Horizontal gene transfer of plasmids can promote rapid evolution and adaptation of bacteria by imparting various traits involved in antibiotic resistance, virulence, and metabolism to their hosts. The host range of plasmids is an...
An effective bioaugmentation system for oil-contaminated soil under low-temperature conditions was developed with a rotational slurry bioreactor. Mixtures of two Rhodococcus oil-degraders, strain A and C, which are officially permitted to be used in bioaugmentation in Japan, were inoculated and A-fuel oil was added to a final concentration of 2500...
A strain-designated YsT was isolated as a filterable bacterial strain from Lake Sanaru, a brackish water lake in Hamamatsu Japan. YsT is aerobic, Gram-negative, and slender rod shaped. YsT grew optimally at 30 °C, pH 7.0–8.0 and without the addition of NaCl. MK-7 was the sole isoprenoid quinone. The main cellular polar lipids were phosphatidylethan...
Two genes, aldA, and mnoA, encoding an NAD-dependent aliphatic dehydrogenase and N,N′-dimethyl-4-nitrosoaniline-dependent methanol dehydrogenase, respectively, are strongly expressed when Rhodococcus erythropolis N9T-4 is grown under oligotrophic conditions. In this study, we found a transcriptional regulator required for the transcription of both...
Geobacillus sp. JF8 is a thermophilic biphenyl and naphthalene degrader. To identify the naphthalene degradation genes, cis-naphthalene dihydrodiol dehydrogenase was purified from naphthalene-grown cells, and its N-terminal amino acid sequence was determined. Using a DNA probe encoding the N-terminal region of the dehydrogenase, a 10-kb DNA fragmen...
The present study reports on the cloning, expression and characterization of catechol 1,2-dioxygenase (CAT) of bacterial strains isolated from dioxin-contaminated soils in Vietnam. Two isolated bacterial strains DF2 and DF4 were identified as Burkholderia cepacia based on their 16S rRNA sequences. Their genes coding CAT was amplified with a specifi...
Strain M8-2T, which was isolated from brackish lake water (Lake Sanaru) in Japan, was characterized for representation of a novel species in the genus Algoriphagus. Cells of strain M8-2T were aerobic, Gram-stain-negative and curved-rod-shaped (0.2-0.5 µm wide and 0.7-1.9 µm long). Strain M8-2T grew optimally at 30 °C, pH 6.5-7.5 and in the presence...
A moderate thermophilic dibenzofuran (DF) degrader, strain 4B1, was isolated from dioxin-contaminated soil in Vietnam under thermophilic condition. A 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis assigned the strain to genus Paenibacillus. The optimum growth temperature of strain 4B1 was 45°C with a doubling time of 2.7 h in the presence of DF as a sole carbon a...
Plasmids have a key role in the rapid evolution and adaptation of their hosts by conferring new phenotypes upon them. It is therefore important to understand the relationships between plasmids and their host organisms and “who can carry which.” Here, factors that determine and affect the host ranges of plasmids are reviewed, including features of r...
Bacterial conjugation is an important step in the horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes via a conjugative DNA element. In-depth comparisons of conjugation frequency under different conditions are required to understand how the conjugative element spreads in nature. However, conventional methods for comparing conjugation frequency are n...
Plasmids are genetic parasites of microorganisms. The genomes of naturally occurring plasmids are expected to be polished via natural selection to achieve long-term persistence in the microbial cell population. However, plasmid genomes are extremely diverse, and the rules governing plasmid genomes are not fully understood. Therefore, computationall...
Novel self-transmissible plasmids were exogenously captured from environmental samples by triparental matings with pBBR1MCS-2 as a mobilizable plasmid and Pseudomonas resinovorans as a recipient. A total of 272 recipients were successfully obtained as plasmid host candidates from granules of an anaerobic methane fermentation plant and from cow manu...
Bioaugmentation is an effective treatment to clean up polluted sites using contaminant-degrading bacteria. However, this treatment is influenced by various environmental conditions, including temperature. In this study, an effective bioaugmentation system under low temperature condition was developed with three Rhodococcus (strains A, C, and D) and...
141 filterable bacteria that passed through a 0.22 μm pore size filter were isolated from Lake Sanaru in Hamamatsu, Japan. These belonged to Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, or Actinobacteria among which the first two phyla comprised the majority of the isolates. 48 isolates (12 taxa) are candidates assignable to new bacterial species or...
Methylobacterium species are representative of methylotrophic bacteria. Their genomes usually encode two types of methanol dehydrogenases (MDHs): MxaF and XoxF. The former is a Ca²⁺-dependent enzyme, and the latter was recently determined to be a lanthanide-dependent enzyme that is necessary for the expression of mxaF. This finding revealed the une...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186248.].
The incompatibility (Inc) P-7 group plasmid pCAR1 can be efficiently transferred among bacteria in artificial microcosms in the presence of divalent cations Ca2+ and Mg2+. One-on-one mating assays between Pseudomonas strains with different plasmids showed that the promotion of conjugation efficiency by divalent cations was exhibited in other plasmi...
Self-transmissible plasmids are classified into two types based on their sex pili: short and rigid pili, and long and flexible pili. The transferability of two plasmids with different types of sex pili, pBP136 and pCAR1, was compared in stirring liquid conditions with different cell density. The most probable number method to count transconjugants...
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A pyrene-degrading microbial consortium was obtained after enrichment with mangrove sediment collected from Thailand. Five cultivable bacteria (Mycobacterium spp. PO1 and PO2, Novosphingobium pentaromativorans PY1, Ochrobactrum sp. PW1, and Bacillus sp. FW1) were successfully isolated from the consortium. Draft genomes of them showed that two diffe...
Membrane vesicles (MVs) are secreted from a wide range of microbial species and transfer their content to other cells. Although MVs play critical roles in bacterial communication, whether MVs selectively interact with bacterial cells in microbial communities is unclear. In this study, we investigated the specificity of the MV-cell interactions and...
Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) including plasmids have an important role in the rapid evolution and adaptation of bacteria. Here, the behavior of MGEs in different environments is reviewed, in particular, behavior of the plasmid pCAR1, a carbazole-degradative plasmid isolated from Pseudomonas resinovorans CA10. pCAR1 belongs to incompatibility P-7...
Algoriphagus
sp. strain M8-2 was isolated from a brackish lake, Lake Sanaru, in Hamamatsu, Japan, as a filterable bacterium through a 0.22-µm-pore-size membrane filter. We report here the complete nucleotide sequence of the M8-2 genome (a 3,882,610-bp chromosome).
The transferability of plasmids pCAR1, pB10, R388, and NAH7 was compared using the same donor-recipient system at different cell density combinations in liquid or on a solid surface. pCAR1 was efficiently transferred in liquid, whereas the other plasmids were preferentially transferred on a solid surface. Difference of liquid or solid affected the...
MvaT proteins are members of the H-NS family of proteins in pseudomonads. The IncP-7 conjugative plasmid pCAR1 carries an mvaT-homologous gene, pmr. In Pseudomonas putida KT2440 bearing pCAR1, pmr and the chromosomally encoded homologous genes, turA and turB, are transcribed at a high level, and that Pmr interacts with TurA and TurB in vitro. In th...
Ammonia inhibition of methane fermentation is one of the leading causes of failure of anaerobic digestion reactors. In a batch anaerobic digestion reactor with 429 mM NH3-N/L of ammonia, the addition of 25 mM phosphate resulted in an increase in methane production rate. Similar results were obtained with the addition of disodium phosphate in contin...
Wood-feeding lower termites harbour symbiotic gut protists that support the termite nutritionally by degrading recalcitrant lignocellulose. These protists themselves host specific endo- and ectosymbiotic bacteria, functions of which remain largely unknown. Here, we present draft genomes of a dominant, uncultured ectosymbiont belonging to the order...
Nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs) play a role in changing the shape of microbial DNA, making it more compact and affecting the regulation of transcriptional networks in host cells. Genes that encode NAPs include H-NS family proteins (H-NS, Ler, MvaT, BpH3, Bv3F, HvrA, and Lsr2), FIS, HU, IHF, Lrp, and NdpA, and are found in both microbial chromos...
Plasmids are important “vehicles” for the communication of genetic information between bacteria. The exchange of plasmids transmits pathogenically and environmentally relevant traits to the host bacteria, promoting their rapid evolution and adaptation to various environments. Over the past six decades, a large number of plasmids have been identifie...
Nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs), which fold bacterial DNA and influence gene transcription, are considered to be global transcriptional regulators of genes on both plasmids and the host chromosome. The incompatibility P-7 group plasmid pCAR1 carries genes encoding three NAPs: H-NS family protein Pmr, NdpA-like protein Pnd, and HU-like protein P...
Comamonas testosteroni TK102 (NBRC 109938; JCM 19603) can utilize biphenyl as a sole carbon source and degrade polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
The complete nucleotide sequence of the TK102 genome was determined. TK102 possesses several integrative and conjugative element-like
regions, and one of them carries biphenyl-degradative genes.
Conjugative transfer of plasmids and integrative and conjugative elements (ICE
s) play a key role in rapid bacterial evolution and adaptation. These elements give a host several new phenotypes that can be advantageous for host survival in some cases, but disadvantageous in others. Comparisons of growth rate and biomass yield as well as competition...
The impacts of plasmid carriage on the host cell were comprehensively analyzed using the conjugative plasmid pCAR1 in three different Pseudomonas hosts, P. putida KT2440, P. aeruginosa PAO1, and P. fluorescens Pf0-1. Plasmid carriage reduced host fitness, swimming motility, and resistance to osmotic or pH stress. Plasmid carriage brought about alte...
Geobacillus sp. strain JF8 (NBRC 109937) utilizes biphenyl and naphthalene as sole carbon sources and degrades polychlorinated biphenyl
(PCB) at 60°C. Here, we report the complete nucleotide sequence of the JF8 genome (a 3,446,630-bp chromosome and a 39,678-bp
plasmid). JF8 has the smallest genome among the known PCB degraders.
Geobacillus sp. strain JF8 (NBRC 109937) utilizes biphenyl and naphthalene as sole carbon sources and degrades polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) at 60°C. Here, we report the complete nucleotide sequence of the JF8 genome (a 3,446,630-bp chromosome and a 39,678-bp plasmid). JF8 has the smallest genome among the known PCB degraders.