Bacillus cereus is a widespread bacteria, thus contaminating all raw materials in contact with soil. In France, B. cereus is considered as the fourth causative agent of foodborne illness. To be pathogenic, B. cereus should multiply during the various stages of food processing and particularly during preservation at low temperature. The aim of this study was to study molecular mechanisms of the adaptive response at low temperature and more precisely the involvement of the B. cereus ATCC 14579 RNA helicases. The cshA gene encoding a putative RNA helicase was identified by a random mutagenesis approach, as playing a major role in cold adaptation of B. cereus. The ATCC 14579 strain possesses 5 genes encoding putative RNA helicases, cshA to cshE, which were all strongly overexpressed at 10°C versus 37°C, whatever the growth stage. The simple deletion of cshA, cshB, and cshC lead to a cold-sensitive phenotype, resulting in an inability to adapt at 10 °C compared to the wild type strain, associated to a huge modification of cell morphology. In addition, CshA, CshB and CshC have a temperature range where their action is decisive. The role of these three RNA helicases also appears to be important in adaptation to oxidative and basic stresses while CshD and E did not appear to be involved in the adaptation to the tested stresses. The RNA helicase CshA has the most important role in adaptation to cold. We demonstrated that CshA is essential at low temperature to allow the maintenance of ribosome stability. CshA interacts directly with ribosomes, and also regulate rRNA degradation. The identification of protein partners that interact with CshA suggests that it could be involve in a complex of RNA decay
