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Infection and Immunity, July 2009, p. 2832-2839, Vol. 77, No. 7
0019-9567/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.01218-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

ace, Which Encodes an Adhesin in Enterococcus faecalis, Is Regulated by Ers and Is Involved in Virulence{triangledown}

Francois Lebreton,1,{dagger} Eliette Riboulet-Bisson,1,{dagger} Pascale Serror,2 Maurizio Sanguinetti,3 Brunella Posteraro,3 Riccardo Torelli,3 Axel Hartke,1 Yanick Auffray,1 and Jean-Christophe Giard1*

Laboratoire de Microbiologie de l'Environnement, EA 956 soutenue par l'INRA, IFR 146, Université de Caen, 14032 Caen Cedex, France,1 Unité des Bactéries Lactiques et Pathogènes Opportunistes, INRA, Domaine de Vilvert, 78350 Jouy-en-Josas, France,2 Institute of Microbiology, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, L. go F. Vito 1, 00168 Rome, Italy3

Received 3 October 2008/ Returned for modification 10 December 2008/ Accepted 24 April 2009

Enterococcus faecalis is an opportunistic pathogen that causes numerous infectious diseases in humans and is a major agent of nosocomial infections. In this work, we showed that the recently identified transcriptional regulator Ers (PrfA like), known to be involved in the cellular metabolism and the virulence of E. faecalis, acts as a repressor of ace, which encodes a collagen-binding protein. We characterized the promoter region of ace, and transcriptional analysis by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR and mobility shift protein-DNA binding assays revealed that Ers directly regulates the expression of ace. Transcription of ace appeared to be induced by the presence of bile salts, probably via the deregulation of ers. Moreover, with an ace deletion mutant and the complemented strain and by using an insect (Galleria mellonella) virulence model, as well as in vivo-in vitro murine macrophage models, we demonstrated for the first time that Ace can be considered a virulence factor for E. faecalis. Furthermore, animal experiments revealed that Ace is also involved in urinary tract infection by E. faecalis.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Laboratoire de Microbiologie de l'Environnement, Université de Caen, 14032 Caen Cedex, France. Phone: (33) 231 565 410. Fax: (33) 231 565 311. E-mail: jean-christophe.giard{at}unicaen.fr

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 11 May 2009.

Editor: A. Camilli

{dagger} These authors contributed equally to this work.

Infection and Immunity, July 2009, p. 2832-2839, Vol. 77, No. 7
0019-9567/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.01218-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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