Antibacterial activity and mechanism of ThDP analogs against rice brown stripe pathogen Acidovorax avenae subsp. avenae RS-1

Thiamin diphosphate (ThDP) analogs have been designed and synthesized based on the ThDP binding site of the pyruvate dehydrogenase multienzyme complex E1 of Escherichia coli. This study investigated the effect of 66 novel ThDP analogs on rice bacterial brown stripe pathogen Acidovorax avenae subsp. avenae strain RS-1. Results indicated that three of the 66 ThDP analogs (designated as 20, 21 and 53) significantly inhibited the in vitro growth of strain RS-1. However, no obvious cell lysis and destruction was found for this rice pathogenic bacterium, which were supported by morphological evidence of transmission electron microscope. In contrast, the three ThDP analogs significantly reduced biofilm formation and the activity of the pyruvate dehydrogenase of strain RS-1. Furthermore, the differential expression of ThDP target gene and 20 secretion system related genes were revealed by using quantitative real-time PCR. Among these, the expressions of ThDP target gene and VgrG-5 under the treatment of ThDP 20 were strongly induced compared to the control, which indicated that the antibacterial mechanism of ThDP analogs may be mainly due to the changed expression of ThDP target gene and secretion system related genes rather than causing damage to cell membrane. Taken together, the application of synthesized ThDP analogs might be a tractable strategy to overcome the pathogen of rice bacterial brown stripe.