Affiliation:
1. Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis, Public Health Research Institute at The International Center for Public Health, 225 Warren Street, Newark, New Jersey 07103-3535
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Surface dehydrogenase (SDH) is an anchorless, multifunctional protein displayed on the surfaces of group A
Streptococcus
(GAS) organisms. SDH is encoded by a single gene,
sdh
(
gap
or
plr
) that is essential for bacterial survival. Hence, the resulting nonfeasibility of creating a knockout mutant is a major limiting factor in studying its role in GAS pathogenesis. An insertion mutagenesis strategy was devised in which a nucleotide sequence encoding a hydrophobic tail of 12 amino acids (
337
IVLVGLVMLLLS
348
) was added at the 3′ end of the
sdh
gene, successfully creating a viable mutant strain (M1-SDH
HBtail
). In this mutant strain, the SDH
HBtail
protein was not secreted in the medium but was retained in the cytoplasm and to some extent trapped within the cell wall. Hence, SDH
HBtail
was not displayed on the GAS surface. The mutant strain, M1-SDH
HBtail
, grew at the same rate as the wild-type strain. The SDH
HBtail
protein displayed the same GAPDH activity as the wild-type SDH protein. Although the whole-cell extracts of the wild-type and mutant strains showed similar GAPDH activities, cell wall extracts of the mutant strain showed 5.5-fold less GAPDH activity than the wild-type strain. The mutant strain, M1-SDH
HBtail
, bound significantly less human plasminogen, adhered poorly to human pharyngeal cells, and lost its innate antiphagocytic activity. These results indicate that the prevention of the cell surface export of SDH affects the virulence properties of GAS. The anchorless SDH protein, thus, is an important virulence factor.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Immunology,Microbiology,Parasitology
Cited by
73 articles.
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