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Infection and Immunity, November 1999, p. 6181-6186, Vol. 67, No. 11
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

The Outer Membrane of Brucella ovis Shows Increased Permeability to Hydrophobic Probes and Is More Susceptible to Cationic Peptides than Are the Outer Membranes of Mutant Rough Brucella abortus Strains

Enrique Freer,1 Javier Pizarro-Cerdá,2 Andrej Weintraub,3 José-Antonio Bengoechea,4 Ignacio Moriyón,4 Kjell Hultenby,5 Jean-Pierre Gorvel,2 and Edgardo Moreno6,*

Unidad de Microscopía Electrónica, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José,1 and Programa de Investigación en Enfermedades Tropicales, Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional, Heredia,6 Costa Rica; Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Marseille-Luminy, France2; Department of Immunology, Microbiology, Pathology and Infectious Diseases, Division of Clinical Bacteriology, Karolinska Institute,3 and Clinical Research Center,5 Huddinge University Hospital, Huddinge, Sweden; and Departamento de Microbiología, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain4

Received 19 April 1999/Returned for modification 23 June 1999/Accepted 2 September 1999

The permeability of the outer membrane (OM) to hydrophobic probes and its susceptibility to bactericidal cationic peptides were investigated for natural rough Brucella ovis and for mutant rough Brucella abortus strains. The OM of B. ovis displayed an abrupt and faster kinetic profile than rough B. abortus during the uptake of the hydrophobic probe N-phenyl-naphthylamine. B. ovis was more sensitive than rough B. abortus to the action of cationic peptides. Bactenecins 5 and 7 induced morphological alterations on the OMs of both rough Brucella strains. B. ovis lipopolysaccharide (LPS) captured considerably more polymyxin B than LPSs from both rough and smooth B. abortus strains. Polymyxin B, poly-L-lysine, and poly-L-ornithine produced a thick coating on the surfaces of both strains, which was more evident in B. ovis than in rough B. abortus. The distinct functional properties of the OMs of these two rough strains correlate with some structural differences of their OMs and with their different biological behaviors in animals and culture cells.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Programa de Investigación en Enfermedades Tropicales (PIET), Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional, 304-3000 Heredia, Costa Rica. Phone: 506-2380761. Fax: 506-2381298. E-mail: emoreno{at}ns.medvet.una.ac.cr.

Infection and Immunity, November 1999, p. 6181-6186, Vol. 67, No. 11
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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