APEC strain IMT5155 harbours the fim genes for the type 1 fimbriae, csg genes for curli fibers and the temperature-sensitive haemagglutinin (tsh) gene [16]. It is interesting that IMT5155 lacks P, F1C, S and Dr fimbriae, known to be specifically involved in UPEC pathogenesis [16, 26, 27]. Thus, other, so far unidentified adhesins might play a role in IMT5155 pathogenesis. Indeed, we recently identified the yqi gene cluster Selleck AR-13324 encoding a fimbrial type of adhesin, called EA/I,
that has been shown to confer an adhesive phenotype to a fim negative K-12 strain [16]. Our data presented here show that autotransporter adhesin AatA might also play a certain role in the pathogenesis of APEC infections. In fact, few autotransporter type adhesins have been shown to be involved in APEC virulence to date. In 1994, Tsh which confers agglutination of chicken erythrocytes, was identified in APEC strain χ7122 [28]. Later, Dozois and co-workers showed that Tsh probably contributes to the development of air sac lesions in birds [19]. Furthermore, it turned out that the vacuolating autotransporter toxin Vat, identified in APEC strain Ec222 for the first time, was involved in the development of cellulitis in broiler chickens [29]. Comparable to Tsh and Vat, AatA of APEC IMT5155 comprises all structural motifs characteristic for members of the family of autotransporter proteins: a signal
peptide at the N-terminus, which would be recognized by the Sec secretion CBL0137 machinery; an autotransporter
repeat, a passenger domain and a C-terminal translocation domain were predicted. Adherence inhibition assay with a fusion protein containing the central part of the AatA protein confirmed the adhesive properties of AatA. This central part comprises the passenger domain, which is the secreted and surface-exposed protein part and thus the protein domain with supposed virulence function. While the translocation domain is highly conserved, the passenger domain demonstrates considerable sequence variation [12] making it a good candidate to gain specific antibodies against AatA. By quantitative real-time PCR and immunoblot assays we could show that IMT5155 and APEC_O1 wildtype aatA are expressed under lab conditions, Florfenicol which stands in contrast to what Li et al. (2010) stated for APEC_O1 in their recent publication [17]. These contradictory observations might in part be explained by different procedures used for antibody production, which could have led to a better detection of the AatA wild-type protein in our study. The failure to detect the very similar BL21-AatA protein with our antibody could be due to the low transcript level as indicated by qPCR experiments. Lower transcription might in turn have occurred due to sequence changes in the promoter regions in front of the IMT5155 and BL21 aatA ORFs, which in fact show only 70% identity.
Related posts:
- monocytogenes InlA over-expressing strain and ΔinlA strain were c
- Here, we identified four β-lactamase genes, three of which were a
- Furthermore, it was found that the attenuated strain spread less
- The tRNAScanSE tool [40] was used to find tRNA genes, whereas rib
- 1d) We therefore concluded that the newly identified genes are u