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Infection and Immunity, June 2000, p. 3242-3250, Vol. 68, No. 6
Laboratoire de Microbiologie, INSERM U-411,
Faculté de Médecine Necker, 75730 Paris Cedex 15, France
Received 3 February 2000/Returned for modification 8 March
2000/Accepted 16 March 2000
Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular
gram-positive bacterium capable of growing in the cytoplasm of
infected host cells. Bacterial escape from the phagosomal vacuole of
infected cells is mainly mediated by the pore-forming hemolysin
listeriolysin O (LLO) encoded by hly. LLO-negative mutants
of L. monocytogenes are avirulent in the mouse model. We
have developed a genetic system with hly as a reporter gene
allowing the identification of both constitutive and in vivo-inducible
promoters of this pathogen. Genomic libraries were created by randomly
inserting L. monocytogenes chromosomal fragments upstream
of the promoterless hly gene cloned into gram-positive and
gram-negative shuttle vectors and expressed in an LLO-negative mutant
strain. With this hly-based promoter trap system, combined
with access to the L. monocytogenes genome database, we
identified 20 in vitro-transcribed genes, including genes encoding (i)
p60, a previously known virulence gene, (ii) a putative new hemolysin,
and (iii) two proteins of the general protein secretion pathway. By
using the hly-based system as an in vivo expression
technology tool, nine in vivo-induced loci of L. monocytogenes were identified, including genes encoding (i) the
previously known in vivo-inducible phosphatidylinositol phospholipase C
and (ii) a putative N-acetylglucosamine epimerase, possibly
involved in teichoic acid biosynthesis. The use of hly as a
reporter is a simple and powerful alternative to classical methods for
transcriptional analysis to monitor promoter activity in L. monocytogenes.
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Listeriolysin O as a Reporter To Identify Constitutive and In
Vivo-Inducible Promoters in the Pathogen Listeria
monocytogenes
and
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: INSERM U411,
Faculté de Médecine Necker, 156 rue de Vaugirard, 75730 Paris Cedex 15, France. Phone: 33 1-40 61 53 76. Fax: 33 1-40 61 55 92. E-mail: charbit{at}necker.fr.
The European Listeria Genome Consortium is composed of Philippe
Glaser, Alexandra Amend, Fernando Baquero-Mochales, Patrick Berche,
Helmut Bloecker, Petra Brandt, Carmen Buchrieser, Trinad Chakraborty,
Alain Charbit, Elisabeth Couvé, Antoine de Daruvar, Pierre
Dehoux, Eugen Domann, Gustavo Dominguez-Bernal, Lionel Durant,
Karl-Dieter Entian, Lionel Frangeul, Hafida Fsihi, Francisco Garcia del
Portillo, Patricia Garrido, Werner Goebel, Nuria Gomez-Lopez, Torsten
Hain, Joerg Hauf, David Jackson, Jurgen Kreft, Frank Kunst, Jorge
Mata-Vicente, Eva Ng, Gabriele Nordsiek, Jose Claudio Perez-Diaz, Bettina Remmel, Matthias Rose, Christophe Rusniok, Thomas Schlueter, Jose-Antonio Vazquez-Boland, Hartmut Voss, Jurgen Wehland, and Pascale Cossart.
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