Activation of the Vibrio cholerae SOS Response Is Not Required for Intestinal Cholera Toxin Production or Colonization

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Abstract
Cholera toxin, one of the main virulence factors of Vibrio cholerae , is encoded in the genome of CTXφ, a V. cholerae -specific lysogenic filamentous bacteriophage. Although the genes encoding cholera toxin, ctxAB , are known to have their own promoter, the toxin genes can also be transcribed from an upstream CTXφ promoter, P rstA . The V. cholerae SOS response to DNA damage induces the CTX prophage by stimulating gene expression initiating from P rstA . Here, we investigated whether ctxA mRNA levels increase along with the levels of the transcripts for the other CTXφ genes following stimulation of the V. cholerae SOS response. Treatment of V. cholerae with the SOS-inducing agent mitomycin C increased the level of ctxA mRNA approximately sevenfold, apparently by augmenting the activity of P rstA . However, using suckling mice as a model host, we found that intraintestinal ctxA transcription does not depend on P rstA . In fact, the suckling mouse intestine does not appear to be a potent inducer of the V. cholerae SOS response. Furthermore, alleviation of LexA-mediated repression of the V. cholerae SOS regulon was not required for V. cholerae growth in the suckling mouse intestine. Our observations suggest that pathogenicity of V. cholerae does not depend on its SOS response.