A New Determinant ofVirulence: The Acetate Exporter CgDtr1.

Abstract

Persistence and virulence ofinfections are multifactorial phenomena, whose understanding is crucial to design more suitable therapeutic strategies. In this study, the putative multidrug transporter CgDtr1, encoded by ORF, is identified as a determinant ofvirulence in the infection model.deletion is shown to decrease the ability to killlarvae by decreasingability to proliferate inhemolymph, and to tolerate the action of hemocytes. The possible role of CgDtr1 in the resistance to several stress factors that underlie death induced by phagocytosis was assessed.was found to confer resistance to oxidative and acetic acid stress. Consistently, CgDtr1 was found to be a plasma membrane acetic acid exporter, relieving the stress induced uponcells within hemocytes, and thus enabling increased proliferation and virulence againstlarvae.