Columbus Children's Research Institute,1 Department of Pediatrics,5 Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology, and Medical Genetics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43205,2 Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143,3 Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, California 949454
Received 12 April 2002/ Returned for modification 13 May 2002/ Accepted 3 July 2002
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Bacterial strains and culture conditions. H. ducreyi strains were grown at 35°C with 5% CO2 on chocolate agar (Becton Dickinson). Chocolate agar plates supplemented with streptomycin at 20 µg/ml, kanamycin at 20 µg/ml, and/or X-Gal (5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-ß-D-galactopyranoside) at 40 µg/ml were prepared as previously described (9, 17). Brain heart infusion broth supplemented with 5% fetal calf serum, 0.0025% hemin chloride solution (Sigma; predissolved in 20 mM NaOH), and 1% IsoVitaleX (sBHI) was used for growth of H. ducreyi in liquid medium. Escherichia coli strains were grown on Luria-Bertani (LB) plates or in LB broth supplemented with appropriate antibiotics. Kanamycin or streptomycin was used at 20 µg/ml and ampicillin was used at 50 µg/ml where appropriate. The bacterial strains and plasmids used in the present study are listed in Table 1.
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Cloning of the H. ducreyi lgtA gene and construction of an lgtA mutant. The H. ducreyi lgtA gene was amplified by PCR using the FailSafe PCR preMix selection kit (Epicenter Technologies). The pair of oligonucleotide primers were targeted to a 1.9-kb DNA fragment containing the lgtA gene and the majority of the pfkA gene (Fig. 2). The two oligonucleotide primers were GlcNAc-F (5'-CTCGGAAATTATTAACCGTGGTGGTAC-3') and GlcNAc-R (5'-GAGCGGTTATTAATGTTAAATAACAGACGG-3').
The amplified 1.9-kb DNA product was cloned into PCRBlunt II-TOPO vector (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, La.). To lower the plasmid copy number, we transformed into the E. coli DH5
pcnB strain instead of the host strain supplied in the kit. One plasmid with an insert of the correct size was sequenced in both directions by using an ABI 377 DNA automated sequencer and dye terminator chemistries. Contig assembly and sequence analysis were performed with DNASTAR (Madison, Wis.) software. The insert had the correct sequence and the plasmid was designated pRSM2378.
An isogenic mutant was constructed in strain 35000HP by using the strategy of Bozue et al. (3). The insert in pRSM2378 has a unique BamHI site in the lgtA gene that was used to insertionally inactivate the gene (Fig. 2). First, the BamHI site from the suicide vector, pRSM 2072, was removed by digestion with BamHI, blunt ended with Klenow enzyme, religated, and transformed into DH5
. The modified plasmid was designated pRSM2377. The 1.9-kb EcoRI fragment from pRSM2378 was ligated to EcoRI and calf intestine alkaline phosphatase-treated pRSM2377 and then transformed into DH5
pcnB. The resulting plasmid was saved as pRSM2379. To inactivate the lgtA gene in the plasmid, pRSM2379 plasmid DNA was digested with BamHI and blunt ended with Klenow enzyme, and the purified linear plasmid DNA was ligated to the
Km2 element, which had been isolated as a SmaI fragment from pJRS102.0. The ligation mixture was transformed into DH5
pcnB, and clones were isolated on LB agar plates supplemented with kanamycin and ampicillin. A plasmid with the appropriate restriction map was saved as pRSM2380. To construct an isogenic lgtA mutant of H. ducreyi 35000HP, pRSM2380 DNA was electroporated into H. ducreyi 35000HP, and kanamycin-resistant clones were selected and then streaked for isolation on chocolate agar containing both kanamycin and X-Gal. Since the hydrolysis product of X-Gal is toxic to H. ducreyi, white clones that grew normally were presumptive mutants which had resolved the cointegrate and therefore were ß-galactosidase deficient. Southern blotting was performed on the genomic DNA from several presumptive mutants to verify the allele exchange as well as the loss of plasmid sequences. One mutant, designated 35000HP-RSM212, was saved for further analysis. Growth curves of the mutant and parent strain were similar and the outer membrane protein profiles of the lgtA mutant and the parent strain were indistinguishable (data not shown).
Analysis of the LOS from the isogenic lgtA mutant of H. ducreyi. Crude LOS preparations from H. ducreyi wild-type 35000HP and mutant strains were prepared by a modified microphenol method (5), analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) on a 14% acrylamide gel, and silver stained as previously reported (5). The most complex glycoform produced by the H. ducreyi galactosyltransferase II (lgtB) mutant is the A4 glycoform (21) (Fig. 3A, lane 2; see Fig. 1 for corresponding structure), and the most complex glycoform produced by the galactosyltransferase I (lbgA) mutant is the A2 glycoform (22) (Fig. 3A, lane 4; see Fig. 1 for corresponding structure). The most complex LOS glycoform produced by strain 35000HP-RSM212, the lgtA mutant (Fig. 3A, lane 3), ran with a mobility between the LOS glycoforms produced by the mutants deficient in the LgtB and LgbA glycosyltransferases. This result demonstrates that the lgtA gene likely encodes the N-acetylglucosamine glycosyltransferase.
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-MSH (CZE mixture; Bio-Rad) and ACTH 1-24 (Sigma). MALDI spectra of the O-deacylated LOS preparations from the two strains are shown in Fig. 4. In both spectra, one major singly deprotonated molecular ion peak (at m/z 2,957.4 and m/z 2,592.4, respectively) corresponding to the major intact LOS glycoforms was observed. A minor peak observed at m/z 3,248.9 in the preparation from the wild-type strain corresponds to the sialic acid-containing glycoform (
=291 mu). The loss of a phosphoethanolamine (PEA) group was observed for all glycoforms yielding peaks at 3,125.9, m/z 2,834.0, and m/z 2,306.5 in the case of the wild-type strain glycoforms and m/z 2,469.1 in the case of the mutant strain glycoforms.
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The glycosyltransferase responsible for addition of GlcNAc to the A5 glycoform and the glycosyltransferase responsible for the addition of galactose to the A5b1 glycoform remain to be identified. However, in this biosynthetic pathway, GlcNAc is always added to an LOS glycoform containing a nonreducing terminal galactose, and the resulting GlcNAc-Gal linkage is always ß1-3. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that the addition of GlcNAc to both the A3 and the A5 glycoforms is catalyzed by the same N-acetylglucosamine glycosyltransferase, the lgtA gene product. Similarly, the addition of galactose to the A4 and A5b1 glycoforms may be catalyzed by the same galactosyltransferase (LgtB).
In summary, we have identified the glycosyltransferase responsible for addition of N-acetylglucosamine to the A-branch of H. ducreyi LOS. Expression of the lgtA gene on the plasmid pLS88 complements the mutation and also results in an increased concentration of the b-branch glycoforms containing additional GlcNAc or GalGlcNAc. This result suggests that LgtA may also be responsible for addition of GlcNAc to the A5 glycoform.
Nucleotide sequence accession number. The sequence for lgtA has been assigned GenBank accession number AF536817.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants R01 AI38444 (to R.S.M.) and R01 AI31254 (to B.W.G.) and by Applied Biosystems, Framingham, Mass., which kindly provided instrumentation to B.W.G. DNA sequence was determined by the Core Facility at Children's Research Institute that was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant HD34615.
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