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Infection and Immunity, November 2002, p. 6460-6463, Vol. 70, No. 11
0019-9567/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.70.11.6460-6463.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Association of Pasteurella multocida Toxin with Vimentin
Hiroaki Shime,1 Takahiro Ohnishi,2 Kaori Nagao,1 Kiyomasa Oka,1 Toshifumi Takao,3 and Yasuhiko Horiguchi1*
Department of Bacterial Toxinology, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases,1
Research Center for Structural and Functional Proteomics, Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871,3
Division of Microbiology, National Institute of Health Sciences, Setagaya, Tokyo 158-8501, Japan2
Received 14 May 2002/
Returned for modification 10 July 2002/
Accepted 29 July 2002

ABSTRACT
To help understand the molecular mechanisms of
Pasteurella multocida toxin (PMT) action, we searched for a cellular protein interacting
with PMT. The ligand overlay assay revealed a 60-kDa cellular
protein that binds to a region from the 840th to 985th amino
acids of the toxin. This protein was identified as vimentin
by peptide mass fingerprinting. The N-terminal head domain of
vimentin was further found to be responsible for the binding
to the toxin.

TEXT
Pasteurella multocida, a causative agent of progressive atrophic
rhinitis in pigs, produces a protein toxin (
P. multocida toxin
[PMT]) with a molecular mass of 146 kDa (
2,
17,
23,
27). Several
lines of evidence have shown that PMT is one of the major virulence
factors that cause turbinate atrophy in atrophic rhinitis (
3-
5,
8,
13,
34). PMT is also known to be a potent mitogen in various
types of cells (
10,
25,
29,
31,
38). Many research groups have
pointed out that the cellular effects of PMT are mediated by
at least two different types of GTPases. PMT-treated cells have
shown increases in inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate and diacylglycerol
levels, Ca
2+ mobilization, and activation of protein kinase
C (
10,
21,
29,
32,
33), suggesting the involvement of phospholipase
C (PLC) in the PMT actions. PLC comprises the ß,

,
and

isozymes, which are considered to be regulated by heterotrimeric
GTPases of the Gq/11 family, several tyrosine kinases, and little-known
pathways, respectively. A PMT-induced Ca
2+-dependent Cl
- current
in
Xenopus oocytes could be inhibited by antibodies against
PLCß1 and -

subunits of heterotrimeric GTPase Gq and
G11 (
36). These results clearly indicate that PMT activates
the signal pathway from the GTPases of the Gq/11 family to PLCß1
to elicit the toxic effects. Moreover, it was found that Gq
but not G11 likely plays an important role in the PMT-induced
activation of the PLC, because G11-deficient fibroblasts retained
their ability to produce inositol phosphates in response to
PMT, whereas Gq-deficient fibroblasts did not. On the other
hand, PMT has also been known to cause formations of stress
fibers and focal adhesions and tyrosine phosphorylations of
focal adhesion kinase and paxillin, both of which are localized
at the focal adhesions (
6,
16,
38). These effects of the toxin
could be blocked by C3 exoenzyme, an inhibitor of Rho function,
indicating that Rho is involved in these toxic actions. The
Rho-mediated PMT actions are likely independent of the Gq signaling
pathway, because Rho was activated and stress fiber formations
were induced by PMT in Gq/11 double-deficient fibroblasts (
38).
Thus, it is now believed that PMT independently stimulates the
two different signaling pathways through the heterotrimeric
GTPase Gq and the small GTPase Rho. However, the real target
molecules for the toxin and nature of its molecular action remain
unknown.
In the present study, to help elucidate the actions of PMT, we used the ligand overlay assay in an attempt to search for a cellular substance that has the ability to associate with the toxin. Swiss 3T3 cells, which are highly sensitive to PMT (25, 29, 33), were homogenized by sonication, and the supernatant after centrifugation at 10,000 x g for 20 min was subjected to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and electroblotting onto polyvinylidene difluoride membranes. Recombinant PMT was purified from extracts of Escherichia coli harboring pSN131, a PMT expression vector, provided by S. Nagai, Nippon Institute for Biological Science, Tokyo, Japan, by the method reported by Nakai et al. (23) and was overlaid at 0.4 µM on the membrane. Substances interacting with PMT were visualized by an enhanced chemiluminescence system (Amersham) after incubation of the membrane with rabbit anti-PMT antibody and horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated goat anti-rabbit immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody (Cappel). As shown in Fig. 1A, a 60-kDa cellular protein (p60) appeared from the cell lysate. To define the region responsible for the binding to p60, we subjected various deletion mutants of PMT to the assay. DNAs encoding the deletion mutants with the N-terminal FLAG tags were generated by PCRs with the suitable nucleotide primers and pSN131 as a template and subcloned into pET21d expression vectors (Novagen). The mutant proteins were purified by affinity chromatography with anti-FLAG M2 antibody beads (Sigma) from extracts of E. coli harboring the vectors. They were designated by amino acid numbers covering each mutant (Fig. 1B). As shown in Fig. 1C, PMT438-985, PMT840-1285, PMT840-985, and PMT840-1131, but not PMT2-484 and PMT985-1285bound to p60, indicating that PMT specifically binds to p60 via the region ranging from amino acid positions 840 to 985. To identify p60, we then separated the cellular proteins of the cell lysate by SDS-PAGE and excised gel pieces at the position corresponding to that of p60. The proteins were digested in gel with trypsin, and the resulting peptides, which were extracted with 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid in 50% acetonitrile from the gel, were subjected to peptide mass fingerprinting by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry. As a result, 19 tryptic peptides matched with 57.4% of the whole sequence of mouse vimentin, an intermediate filament component (Table 1). The ligand overlay assay revealed that PMT actually bound to mouse vimentin, provided by M. Inagaki, Aichi Cancer Center Research Institute (Fig. 2A). Furthermore, the binding of PMT to vimentin was confirmed by a pull-down assay as described below. Purified glutathione S-transferase (GST)-tagged PMT840-985 or GST coupled with glutathione Sepharose 4B (Amersham) was mixed with vimentin and allowed to react at 4°C for 3 h. The Sepharose beads were washed, and the proteins that precipitated with the beads were analyzed by Western blot analysis with goat anti-vimentin antiserum (V4630; Sigma) and HRP-conjugated anti-goat IgG antibody (Chemicon). Vimentin was precipitated with GST-PMT840-985, but not with GST, indicating that PMT is associated with vimentin in solution (Fig. 2B). Vimentin is composed of three functional domains, designated head, rod, and tail, from the N terminus to the C terminus. Each domain that was expressed as GST-tagged protein in E. coli was subjected to the ligand overlay assay. PMT840-1285 was found to bind to the GST-tagged head domain that migrated to the position of the predicted molecular size, whereas there were no positive signals in the GST-tagged rod and tail domains, except nonspecifically reactive bands (Fig. 3).
PMT is a single-chain polypeptide consisting of 1,285 amino
acid residues. Its N-terminal region shows 24 and 27% homologies
with
E. coli cytotoxic necrotizing factors 1 and 2 (CNF1 and
-2, respectively) (
7,
26). In addition, it was reported that
PMT possesses biological activities apparently similar to those
of
Bordetella dermonecrotic toxin (DNT) (
22), which has homology
in the C-terminal region with CNF1 and -2 (
11,
18,
35). Therefore,
it has been proposed that CNFs, DNT, and PMT could be classified
into the same toxin family (
18). CNFs deamidate and DNT deamidates
or polyaminates the Rho GTPases. These modifications make the
GTPases constitutively active, which probably underlies their
toxicities on target tissues (
9,
12,
19,
30). In contrast to
CNFs and DNT, however, PMT did not show similar enzymatic activities
(
25). Thus, clarification of the target molecules and mode of
action of PMT is now an important issue in this area. In the
present study, we demonstrated that vimentin shows affinity
to PMT. To our knowledge, this is the first report to identify
cellular substances that associate with the toxin. Recently,
it was shown that the C-terminal fragment of PMT induces inositol
phosphate production and rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton,
and the N-terminal fragment competitively inhibits the action
of the toxin (
1,
28). These results imply that receptor binding
and intracellularly active domains reside on the N- and C-terminal
regions on PMT, respectively. According to these reports, the
C-terminal fragments of PMT encompassing amino acids 581 through
1285 or 681 through 1285 were active when introduced into cells
by electroporation and microinjection (
1,
28). Because these
fragments include the region (PMT
840-985) responsible for binding
to vimentin, it is possible that the binding of PMT to vimentin
may play a role in its intracellular action. Vimentin is a major
component of type III intermediate filament (IF) and is predominantly
expressed in mesenchymal cells and many types of tumor cells.
Although the roles of IF and vimentin in cellular function remain
to be elucidated, some reports have shown that IF contributes
to the maintenance of cell shape, cell motility, and cytokinesis,
some aspects of which have been shown to be regulated by phosphorylations
of distinct sites of the head domain (
14,
15,
20,
24,
37). Furthermore,
it has been reported that vimentin associates with a variety
of cellular substances through the head domain and is thereby
involved in various aspects of cellular events. In the present
study, PMT was also found to bind to the head domain of vimentin.
These facts imply that vimentin might be one of the accessory
components for PMT actions, although at present it is difficult
to predict a correlation between vimentin or IF and the activation
of Gq-PLCß or Rho. To clarify this issue, we are now
attempting to examine the effects of PMT on vimentin-deficient
cells and intracellular localization of vimentin, IF, and PMT
in the intoxicated target cells.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank S. Nagai for pSN131 and M. Inagaki for mouse vimentin.
This work was supported in part by Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research (B) no. 13470059 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Bacterial Toxinology, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Yamada-oka 3-1, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. Phone: 81-6-6879-8284. Fax: 81-6-6879-8283. E-mail:
horiguti{at}biken.osaka-u.ac.jp.

Editor: J. T. Barbieri

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Infection and Immunity, November 2002, p. 6460-6463, Vol. 70, No. 11
0019-9567/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.70.11.6460-6463.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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