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Regulation of neuraminidase expression in Streptococcus pneumoniae

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-01-11, 09:39 authored by Luciana Gualdi, Jasvinder Kaur Hayre, Alice Gerlini, Alessandro Bidossi, Leonarda Colomba, Claudia Trappetti, Gianni Pozzi, Jean-Denis Docquier, Peter Andrew, Susanna Ricci, Marco R. Oggioni
BACKGROUND: Sialic acid (N-acetylneuraminic acid; NeuNAc) is one of the most important carbohydrates for Streptococcus pneumoniae due of its role as a carbon and energy source, receptor for adhesion and invasion and molecular signal for promotion of biofilm formation, nasopharyngeal carriage and invasion of the lung. RESULTS: In this work, NeuNAc and its metabolic derivative N-acetyl mannosamine (ManNAc) were used to analyze regulatory mechanisms of the neuraminidase locus expression. Genomic and metabolic comparison to Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus oralis, Streptococcus gordonii and Streptococcus sanguinis elucidates the metabolic association of the two amino sugars to different parts of the locus coding for the two main pneumococcal neuraminidases and confirms the substrate specificity of the respective ABC transporters. Quantitative gene expression analysis shows repression of the locus by glucose and induction of all predicted transcriptional units by ManNAc and NeuNAc, each inducing with higher efficiency the operon encoding for the transporter with higher specificity for the respective amino sugar. Cytofluorimetric analysis demonstrated enhanced surface exposure of NanA on pneumococci grown in NeuNAc and ManNAc and an activity assay allowed to quantify approximately twelve times as much neuraminidase activity on induced cells as opposed to glucose grown cells. CONCLUSIONS: The present data increase the understanding of metabolic regulation of the nanAB locus and indicate that experiments aimed at the elucidation of the relevance of neuraminidases in pneumococcal virulence should possibly not be carried out on bacteria grown in glucose containing media.

Funding

The work was in part funded by the European Commission grant PNEUMOPATH FP7-HEALTH-222983 and by Ricerca Regionale Toscana in Materia di Salute 2009–201.

History

Citation

BMC Microbiology, 2012, 12:200

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF LIFE SCIENCES/Biological Sciences/Genetics and Genome Biology

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

BMC Microbiology

Publisher

BioMed Central

eissn

1471-2180

Acceptance date

2012-09-05

Copyright date

2012

Available date

2018-01-11

Publisher version

https://bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2180-12-200

Language

en

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