Fig. 6: Summary of bile-salt response and proposed germination pathway. | Communications Biology

Fig. 6: Summary of bile-salt response and proposed germination pathway.

From: Clostridium septicum manifests a bile salt germinant response mediated by Clostridioides difficile csp gene orthologs

Fig. 6: Summary of bile-salt response and proposed germination pathway.

a Summary of bile-salts and their germinant effects on the various mutants. b The proposed germination pathway of C. septicum is compared with the known pathway elements for C. difficile and C. perfringens. CspC-1718 and CspC-82 are bile salt sensors (similar to C. difficile’s CspC) which recognize their cognate bile-salt germinants, leading to downstream activation events which trigger germination. While C. septicum does not appear to have a germinant response to amino acids (unlike C. difficile and C. perfringens), several amino acids can act as co-germinants with sub-optimal levels of GCA (Supplementary Fig. S6A). We have not included potential mediators of amino acid sensing in this model. A dotted arrow joins CspBA-81 and SleC-83 because it is unclear if SleC is activated solely by CspB (like in C. difficile), redundantly by multiple Csp proteins (like in C. perfringens), or a novel alternative configuration.

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