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Infection and Immunity, December 2004, p. 7334-7337, Vol. 72, No. 12
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.12.7334-7337.2004
Evaluation of the Role of Constitutive Isocitrate Lyase Activity in Yersinia pestis Infection of the Flea Vector and Mammalian Host
Florent Sebbane,
Clayton O. Jarrett,
Jan R. Linkenhoker, and
B. Joseph Hinnebusch*
Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana
Received 3 May 2004/
Returned for modification 3 June 2004/
Accepted 13 August 2004

ABSTRACT
Yersinia pestis, unlike the closely related
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis,
constitutively produces isocitrate lyase (ICL). Here we show
that the
Y. pestis aceA homologue encodes ICL and is required
for growth on acetate but not for flea infection or virulence
in mice. Thus, deregulation of the glyoxylate pathway does not
underlie the recent adaptation of
Y. pestis to arthropod-borne
transmission.

TEXT
The glyoxylate pathway is an anapleurotic cycle that bypasses
the two CO
2-generating steps of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA)
cycle to preserve carbon and so enables bacteria to use acetate
or fatty acids as a sole energy and carbon source (
4,
16). The
glyoxylate cycle includes five TCA cycle enzymes and two specific
enzymes: isocitrate lyase (ICL) and malate synthase (MDH) (
16).
In
Escherichia coli, the glyoxylate bypass enzymes are encoded
by the
aceBAK operon which contains the genes for MDH (
aceB),
ICL (
aceA), and the isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICD) kinase/phosphatase
(
aceK) (
3,
15). The
aceBAK operon is negatively regulated by
the IclR repressor when carbon sources other than acetate and
fatty acids are present and is derepressed by integration host
factor when only acetate or fatty acid is available (
32). Expression
of the glyoxylate pathway is also controlled by the FruR and
FadR transcriptional regulators and the small RNA-binding protein
CsrA, and it is posttranscriptionally controlled by the phosphorylation
of ICD (
8,
17,
18,
21,
27,
35).
Yersinia pestis, the agent of plague, is unusual among Enterobacteriaceae because it constitutively produces the glyoxylate bypass enzymes (9, 10). Genome sequencing of Y. pestis revealed the presence of the potential aceBAK and iclR homologues, which are separated by 119 bp and are transcribed in the opposite direction (5, 25). The Y. pestis aceA gene is predicted to encode a protein of 345 amino acids with 54.4 to 84.4% identity and 68.3 to 89.4% similarity to ICL proteins of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria (F. Sebbane, unpublished data). All the amino acids defined as essential for ICL activity in other bacteria (H184, H197, H356, K194, C195, S319, and S321) were conserved in Y. pestis (4). The Y. pestis gene iclR appeared to be a pseudogene due to a frame shift (5, 25). In contrast, the iclR homologue of the closely related Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (which, like other Enterobacteriaceae, has inducible ICL activity) is intact (1a, 10), suggesting that iclR mutation and constitutive expression of ICL provide a selective advantage important for the Y. pestis life cycle. Mutation of iclR appeared to be the only reason why Y. pestis constitutively produces ICL, because the upstream promoter region of the Y. pestis aceBAK homologue operon is identical to that of Y. pseudotuberculosis and contains predicted binding sites for IclR, FruR, and integration host factor.
Characterization of Y. pestis aceA mutants.
To determine whether the Y. pestis aceA homologue encoded ICL, a Y. pestis aceA mutant was constructed by in-frame deletion. The Y. pestis aceA gene and upstream and downstream flanking regions were PCR amplified by using primer set A1 (5'GAACCTTGTTCTGGCGAG3')-A2 (5'CACTGAGATCCCCTTTAGG3') and cloned into pCRII to create pCJ1 (Table 1). Inverse PCR of pCJ1 was performed using primer set A3 (5'CTCGGCCTTATAGCGCCGAAGATGTCATCAAGCTGCGTG3')-A4 (5'CCGCCAGCGTAATAAACTGGTATTTGTAGCCCATGGCGGAGA3') to delete a 909-bp internal fragment of aceA, and the PCR product was ligated to generate pCJ2. A 1.5-kb XbaI-SacI fragment of pCJ2 containing the mutated aceA was subcloned into the suicide plasmid pCVD442 (6) to yield pCJ3, which was introduced by electroporation into E. coli S17-1
pir. The aceA deletion was introduced into the Y. pestis strains KIM6+ and 195/P by allelic exchange (6); the resulting mutants were named Y. pestis MacK and MacP, respectively. The 909-bp deletion in the two strains was verified by PCR analysis using primer sets that hybridized to sequences external (A1-A2) or internal (A5 [5'TTTGAAGACCAATTGGCCGC3']-A6 [5'CGGTCAGATTCTTCTTCCAG3']) to the deleted region (Table 1, Fig. 1).
Loss of ICL activity in the
aceA deletion strains was confirmed
by enzymatic assay as previously described (
26). No ICL activity
was detected in the
aceA mutants, in contrast to the wild type
(Table
2). These results demonstrate that the
Y. pestis aceA homologue encodes an ICL enzyme and imply that the
aceB and
aceK homologues encode the MDH and ICD enzymes.
It has been suggested that the constitutive glyoxylate pathway
may compensate for TCA cycle or anapleurotic enzyme deficiencies
in
Y. pestis (
1). To test these hypotheses, the ability to use
glucose, pyruvate, and acetate as sole carbon and energy sources
was investigated.
Y. pestis KIM6+, but not the isogenic
aceA mutant, was able to grow at 28°C on minimal media (25 mM
HEPES [pH 7]; 2.5 mM K
2HPO
4, 10 mM NH
4Cl, 0.1 mM FeCl
2, 0.01
mM MnCl
2, 20 mM MgCl
2, 2.5 mM CaCl
2, and 2.5 mM Na
2SO
3; 0.04
mM thiamine, 0.04 mM calcium pantothenate, and 0.04 mM biotine;
1 mM
L-isoleucine, 1 mM
L-valine, 1 mM
L-phenylalanine, 1 mM
L-methionine, and 5 mM
L-glycine; and 1.5% agar) containing
0.2% acetate as a unique carbon source (Table
2). In contrast,
both wild-type and mutant strains grew at comparable rates on
minimal-medium plates containing 0.2% glucose or pyruvate. These
results showed that ICL was required for use of the C
2 compound
acetate but not the C
3 compound pyruvate, suggesting that
Y. pestis has a fully functional TCA cycle; this conclusion is
consistent with previous chemical and genetic analyses (
7,
9,
25).
Effect of aceA mutation in a mouse infection model.
ICL has been shown to be required by the intracellular pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the extracellular pathogen Candida albicans to survive in macrophages and establish infection in mammals (20, 22). Because Y. pestis is believed to be transiently phagocytized by macrophages or dendritic cells in the dermis after transmission (33), constitutive aceA expression could be important for pathogenesis. The impact of ICL loss was assessed by using a mouse experimental model of plague to test this hypothesis. The 50% lethal doses (LD50s) (28) of Y. pestis 195/P and MacP were <10 CFU following intravenous inoculation and 46 and 32 CFU, respectively, following intradermal inoculation. Moreover, no difference in time to disease onset was observed for animals inoculated with ICL-positive or -negative Y. pestis (Fig. 2).
Effect of aceA mutation in a flea experimental model.
Y. pestis forms aggregates that resemble a biofilm in the flea
midgut, which can involve the proventriculus and cause blockage,
a crucial step for the bacterial transmission from fleas to
mammals (
13). In contrast,
Y. pseudotuberculosis does not block
the proventriculi of fleas (
12). Because use of fatty acids,
a major component of the flea's blood meal (
19), requires the
glyoxylate pathway, we tested whether the
Y. pestis growth phenotype
in the flea depends on ICL.
Xenopsylla cheopis rat fleas were
infected using a previously established flea model of infection
(
11). During the 4-week period after the infectious blood meal,
26% ± 5.6% of fleas infected with
Y. pestis KIM6+ and
27% ± 2.1% of fleas infected with
Y. pestis MacK developed
proventricular blockage (Fig.
3A). No difference in the time
to blockage was observed; fleas infected with either strain
became blocked 2 to 4 weeks after infection. In addition, the
infection rate and bacterial load achieved in the flea midgut
were comparable (Fig.
3B). These results are in concordance
with previous results showing that 22 to 38% of fleas infected
with wild-type
Y. pestis become blocked, that blockage appears
2 weeks after infection, and that infected fleas contain an
average of 3
x 10
4, 1.8
x 10
5, and 5.2
x 10
5 bacteria at 0,
1, and 4 weeks after infection, respectively (
12).
Conclusion.
In mice
Y. pestis virulence, unlike that of other pathogens,
did not depend on ICL activity (
20,
22), and ICL was not required
to infect and block the flea vector either. Therefore,
Y. pestis does not depend on fatty acids or acetate as an essential carbon
source in the insect or mammalian host. In contrast to
Y. pseudotuberculosis,
none of more than 1,600
Y. pestis clones isolated from different
animals and continents had a normally regulated glyoxylate cycle
(
10). Why does
Y. pestis have a constitutive glyoxylate pathway,
unlike its recent ancestor
Y. pseudotuberculosis? Our results
suggest that this deregulation is neither a burden nor an advantage.
It has been proposed that
Y. pestis is at an early stage of
genome decay (
36). Therefore, genes which are no longer required,
like
aceBAK, may remain as an inheritance from
Y. pseudotuberculosis,
and mutation of the
Y. pestis iclR negative regulator may be
an evolutionary accident with a neutral effect. However, it
cannot be excluded that loss of
iclR changes the regulation
of genes other than
aceBAK that are important for the
Y. pestis flea-mammal cycle. Alternatively, constitutive ICL activity
may be useful during saprophytic life, since
Y. pestis has the
capacity of long-term survival in soil (
14,
23).
Two previous studies showed that genes which are intact in Y. pseudotuberculosis but are pseudogenes in Y. pestis (genes responsible for production of a smooth lipopolysaccharide and ureolytic activity) were not responsible for virulence differences between Y. pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis (24, 29). In addition to these two examples of functional gene loss, our results show that loss of regulation of a biochemical pathway does not account for differences in pathogenesis between these two species.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Gregory Somerville, David Erickson, Roberto Rebeil,
Christopher Burlak, and Michel Simonet for critical reading
of the manuscript.
This work was supported in part by a New Scholars Award in Global Infectious Diseases to B.J.H. from the Ellison Medical Foundation.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH, 903 S. 4th St., Hamilton, MT 59840. Phone: (406) 363-9260. Fax: (406) 363-9394. E-mail:
jhinnebusch{at}niaid.nih.gov.

Editor: J. B. Bliska

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Infection and Immunity, December 2004, p. 7334-7337, Vol. 72, No. 12
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.12.7334-7337.2004
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