A novel role for antibiotic resistance plasmids in facilitating Salmonella adaptation to non-host environments

It is believed that the main role of plasmids that encode multiple antibiotic resistance is to confer their hosts the ability to survive in the presence of antimicrobial compounds. In the pathogenic bacterium Salmonella, plasmids of the incompatibility group HI1 account for a significant proportion of antibiotic resistance phenotypes. In this work, we show that plasmid R27 has a strong impact on the global transcriptome of Salmonella Typhimurium strain SL1344 when cells grow at low temperature and enter the stationary phase. Down-regulated genes include pathogenicity islands, anaerobic respiration and metabolism determinants. Up-regulated genes include factors involved in the response to nutrient starvation, antimicrobial resistance, iron metabolism and the heat shock response. Accordingly, cells harbouring R27 are more resistant to heat shock than plasmid-free cells. The use of a different IncHI1 plasmid, pHCM1, provided evidence that these plasmids facilitate adaptation of Salmonella to environmental conditions outside their host(s). This is consistent with the fact that conjugative transfer of IncHI1 plasmids only occurs at low temperature. A significant number of the R27-dependent alterations in gene expression could be correlated with expression of a plasmid-encoded orthologue of the global modulator H-NS, which is up-regulated when cells grow at low temperature.