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Infection and Immunity, June 2002, p. 3304-3307, Vol. 70, No. 6
0019-9567/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.70.6.3304-3307.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Proteolysis of CD14 on Human Gingival Fibroblasts by Arginine-Specific Cysteine Proteinases from Porphyromonas gingivalis Leading to Down-Regulation of Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Interleukin-8 Production
Hiroyuki Tada,1,2 Shunji Sugawara,1* Eiji Nemoto,2 Nobuhiro Takahashi,3 Takahisa Imamura,4 Jan Potempa,5 James Travis,6 Hidetoshi Shimauchi,2 and Haruhiko Takada1
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,1
Department of Periodontics and Endodontics,2
Department of Oral Biochemistry, Tohoku University School of Dentistry, Sendai 980-8575,3
Division of Molecular Pathology, Department of Neuroscience and Immunology, Kumamoto University Graduate School of Medical Science, Kumamoto 860-0811, Japan,4
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Molecular Biology, Jagiellonian University, 31-120 Craców, Poland,5
Department of Biochemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 306026
Received 15 October 2001/
Returned for modification 11 December 2001/
Accepted 25 February 2002

ABSTRACT
Arginine-specific cysteine proteinases (gingipains-R) from periodontopathic
Porphyromonas gingivalis cleaved CD14, a bacterial pattern recognition
receptor, on human gingival fibroblasts (HGF). Consequently,
gingipains-R reduced lipopolysaccharide-induced interleukin-8
production by HGF, indicating that gingipains-R inhibited CD14-dependent
HGF activation and are involved in immune evasion by the bacterium
in periodontal tissues.

INTRODUCTION
Porphyromonas gingivalis has been implicated as a principal
bacterium in adult periodontitis (
8,
30) and possesses a number
of putative virulence factors such as proteolytic enzymes (
3).
It produces two cysteine proteinases specific for Arg-X (50
and 95 kDa) or Lys-X (105 kDa) bonds, which are referred to
as arginine-specific gingipain (Rgp) and lysine-specific gingipain
(Kgp), respectively (
2,
23). The 95-kDa high-molecular-mass
Rgp (HRgpA) differs from the 50-kDa Rgp (RgpB) in that the protein
noncovalently complexes with the hemagglutinin/adhesin domain
in the same manner as Kgp. It has been shown that gingipains
play a critical role in the onset of inflammation through a
wide variety of biological activities (
9-
17,
19,
20,
32,
38).
CD14, a 55-kDa glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored membrane protein, functions as a pattern recognition receptor for many bacterial components such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the innate immune response (27, 39); e.g., CD14 mediates sensitive responses to LPS by interacting with Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and MD-2, a molecule associated with TLR4 (25, 28, 31, 35). CD14 is expressed strongly on monocytes (5, 36) and weakly on neutrophils (7) and human gingival fibroblasts (HGF) (33, 37), all of which exist in periodontal tissue with periodontitis, indicating that these cell types are the first line of defense against invasive bacteria triggered by the bacterial components via CD14 in periodontal tissues.
We have recently shown that the gingipains preferentially cleave CD14 on human monocytes and consequently inhibit a CD14-dependent monocyte activation pathway triggered by LPS (32), suggesting that P. gingivalis could evade immune surveillance controlled by monocytes. Periodontitis is clinically characterized as inflammation in periodontal connective tissue, in which the dominant cell type is HGF. HGF may actively participate in the inflammatory response by producing various cytokines (34) and chemokines such as interleukin-8 (IL-8) (33) which are released from HGF via CD14. Therefore, we examined the effect of gingipains on HGF functions.
We first examined the effect of gingipains purified from P. gingivalis HG66 culture supernatant (23, 26) on the expression of CD14 by HGF by using flow cytometry (32). HGF were prepared from the explants of normal gingiva obtained from patients who gave informed consent (33). When HGF were treated with 0.03 to 0.3 µM HRgpA and RgpB for 30 min, the expression of CD14 on the cell surface was significantly (P < 0.01) reduced (Fig. 1). The expression was almost completely abolished by 60 to 120 min of treatment with 0.1 and 0.3 µM concentrations of both HRgpA and RgpB. By contrast, Kgp exhibited much less activity for the reduction than Rgps. An Rgp-specific inhibitor, Phe-Pro-Arg-chloromethyl ketone (FPR-cmk) (32), efficiently inhibited HRgpA activity at a 10-fold molar excess (Table 1). By contrast, a Kgp-specific inhibitor, benzyloxycarbonyl-Phe-Lys-chloromethyl ketone (32), exerted only a marginal effect, indicating that the enzymatic activity of Rgp is required for the elimination of CD14. HRgpA differs from RgpB in that it has a hemagglutinin/adhesin domain. This domain binds to fibrinogen, fibronectin, and laminin (24) and reacts with phospholipids of the plasma membrane in a Ca2+-dependent manner (15). This could be the reason that HRgpA cleaved CD14 more efficiently than RgpB, i.e., because the domain might increase the affinity of the enzyme ligand. HRgpA at 1.0 µM still effectively reduced CD14 expression in the presence of 20% freshly isolated human serum (Table 1), indicating that high doses of gingipains are resistant to inhibitors in serum. This observation is supported by the fact that serum is ineffective in preventing the Rgp activation of prekallikrein (11), factor X (14), and protein C (9).
Expression of CD59 and CD157, two other GPI-anchored proteins
(
4,
18), as well as CD40 was only slightly decreased by treatment
with HRgpA (Fig.
2A), which eliminated the possibility that
Rgp preferentially cleaves GPI-anchored molecules on the cell
surface. The expression of TLR4 as well as of major histocompatibility
complex class I molecules was unchanged after the treatment,
although there are 21 Arg and 9 Lys sites and 29 Arg and 35
Lys sites on CD14 and TLR4 amino acid sequences, respectively
(
6,
29). These findings indicate that HRgpA is structurally
inaccessible to TLR4 and that at least the functional anti-TLR4
binding site is conserved. After treatment, CD14 was gradually
reexpressed on the cell surface upon reculture and more than
80% of the initial value was recovered at 48 h (Fig.
2B).
Immunoblot analysis using anti-human CD14 polyclonal antibody
(
32) showed that pretreatment of the purified membrane fraction
isolated from HGF (
33) with HRgpA markedly degraded CD14 into
multiple CD14 fragments (Fig.
3), indicating that the reduction
of CD14 on HGF induced by gingipains resulted from direct proteolysis
and that CD14 proteolyzed by gingipains had no ability to function
as the soluble form. Gingipains can also degrade soluble CD14
(
32). Therefore, it is conceivable that gingipains down-regulate
CD14-mediated cell activation in vivo.
In support of this hypothesis, preincubation of HGF with 0.3
µM HRgpA for 30 min markedly suppressed IL-8 production
triggered by 10 ng of LPS/ml (
Escherichia coli O55:B5; Sigma),
as determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (
22) (Fig.
4). Pretreatment of 0.3 µM HRgpA with 3 µM FPR-cmk
for 10 min recovered IL-8 production. Anti-CD14 monoclonal antibody
(MAb) was used as a positive control. Furthermore, preincubation
of HGF with 0.3 µM HRgpA for 30 min did not have any inhibitory
effect on IL-8 production by HGF upon stimulation with phorbol
myristate acetate (data not shown). In the present study, stimulation
of HRgpA-treated HGF with LPS after removal of residual HRgpA
by washing (Fig.
4) eliminated the possibility that the decrease
in IL-8 production was due to degradation of IL-8 by HRgpA (
21).
IL-8 is one of the major chemokines produced by HGF triggered
by LPS via CD14 (
33). IL-8 triggers both neutrophil degranulation
and respiratory burst and enhances phagocytosis in addition
to chemotactic activity (
1,
25), indicating that reduced production
of IL-8 may be important for attenuating neutrophil function.
Collectively, the data reported here indicate that Rgps downregulates
CD14-mediated cell activation of HGF and further support the
hypothesis of the immune evasion mechanism of
P. gingivalis in periodontal tissues.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank K. Miyake and S. Akashi (The University of Tokyo, Tokyo,
Japan) for providing anti-TLR4 MAb HTA1216.
This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (12470380 and 13671894) and for Encouragement of Young Scientists (12771320) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Tohoku University School of Dentistry, 4-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8575, Japan. Phone: 81-22-717-8306. Fax: 81-22-717-8309. E-mail:
sugawars{at}mail.cc.tohoku.ac.jp.

Editor: J. D. Clements

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Infection and Immunity, June 2002, p. 3304-3307, Vol. 70, No. 6
0019-9567/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.70.6.3304-3307.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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