Conclusions We established an important role of SspA in the regulation of LEE- and non-LEE-encoded virulence factors of a T3SS, which is important for A/E lesion formation by EHEC. SspA downregulates H-NS levels allowing the expression of EHEC virulence genes, which are part of the H-NS/Ler regulon. Virulence genes in many bacteria are horizontally acquired genetic elements and subject to repression by H-NS.
Thus, our study indicates that SspA potentially plays an important role in the pathogenicity of many bacterial pathogens in general. Methods Standard procedures Standard DNA selleck inhibitor techniques, agar plates and liquid media were used as described [60]. Restriction check details endonucleases, T4 DNA polynucleotide kinase- and ligase (New England Biolabs) and the Expand High Fidelity PCR System (Roche Applied Sciences) were used according to manufacturer’s instructions. DNA sequencing
was performed by the National Cancer Institute DNA Sequencing MiniCore facility. Bacteria were grown at 37°C in LB or DMEM (Invitrogen #11885) media supplemented with ampicillin (100μg/ml), chloramphenicol (25 μg/ml) or kanamycin (25 μg/ml) as needed. HEp-2 cells (ATTC # CCL-23) were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 U/ml penicillin and 100 μg/ml streptomycin at 37°C in 5% CO2. Strain and plasmid constructions Oligonucleotides used in this study Rigosertib mw are listed in Table 1. Gene deletions were constructed in EHEC O157:H7 EDL933 strain ATCC 700927 (Perna et al. 2001) by Lambda Red-mediated recombination using linear DNA fragments as described [61]. An in-frame deletion of sspA was created as previously described [44] resulting in strain DJ6010 (ATCC 700927 ΔsspA). The DNA fragment used for making the sspA deletion was amplified by PCR from pKD13 with primers PKD13sspAUS2 and PKD13sspADS. An hns deletion mutant derivative of strain ATCC 700927 was made by inserting a chloramphenicol
resistance-encoding cat cassette, which was PCR amplified from pKD3 however [61] using primers Δhns92-1 and Δhns92-2, 276 nt from the hns translation initiation codon (strain DJ6011). An sspA hns double mutant (DJ6012) was constructed by introducing the Δhns::cat deletion into strain DJ6010. All gene deletion constructs were verified by PCR amplification using primer sets sspABUS/sspABDS and hnsUS2/hnsDS2. In addition, Western blot analysis using polyclonal antibodies specific to the respective proteins confirmed the sspA and hns mutant strains. Plasmid pACYCler (pDJ610) contains a ~ 800 bp DNA fragment encoding ler expressed from its two native promoters cloned into the HindIII/BamHI sites of pACYC184. The DNA fragment was PCR amplified from EDL933 genomic DNA using oligos lerUS2/lerDS2.
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