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Infection and Immunity, March 2005, p. 1868-1872, Vol. 73, No. 3
0019-9567/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.73.3.1868-1872.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Production of a Proteolytically Active Protein, Chlamydial Protease/Proteasome-Like Activity Factor, by Five Different Chlamydia Species
Feng Dong,1
Youmin Zhong,1
Bernard Arulanandam,2 and
Guangming Zhong1*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio,1
Department of Biology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas2
Received 25 August 2004/
Returned for modification 15 October 2004/
Accepted 19 October 2004

ABSTRACT
We have previously identified a chlamydial protein, chlamydial
protease/proteasome-like activity factor (CPAF), for degrading
host transcription factors in cells infected with the human
chlamydial species
Chlamydia trachomatis or
Chlamydia pneumoniae.
We now report that functional CPAF was also produced during
infection with the species
Chlamydia muridarum,
Chlamydia psittaci,
and
Chlamydia caviae, which primarily infect nonhuman hosts.

TEXT
Chlamydiae, a family of obligate intracellular bacterial pathogens
that must replicate in cytoplasmic vacuoles of eukaryotic cells
(
11), consist of multiple species with a diverse range of tissue
tropism and disease processes (
8), including the human pathogens
Chlamydia trachomatis (
16) and
Chlamydia pneumoniae (
1,
2,
14,
15,
22) and the animal pathogens
Chlamydia muridarum (formerly
known as
C. trachomatis mouse pneumonitis agent, designated
MoPn) (
3,
17,
18),
Chlamydia caviae (also known as GPIC) (
13),
and
Chlamydia psittaci 6BC (
24,
25). Despite the profound difference
in host range, the chlamydial species display a remarkable similarity
in their genome sequences (
20,
21,
23) and possess a profoundly
conserved intracellular growth cycle with distinct biphasic
stages (
11). To complete their obligate intracellular replication,
chlamydial species may have to protect the infected cells from
host immune recognition and effector mechanisms. Both
C. trachomatis and
C. pneumoniae have been shown to possess various strategies
for evading host defense (
4,
9,
10,
12,
19,
26-
29) and to produce
a 70-kDa protease, chlamydial protease/proteasome-like activity
factor (CPAF), for degrading host transcription factors, such
as RFX5, required for major histocompatibility complex antigen
expression (
9,
27,
29). Interestingly, the activation of the
70-kDa CPAF is regulated via the processing of the inactive
full-length CPAF into a 29-kDa N-terminal and a 35-kDa C-terminal
fragment for forming functional intramolecular heterodimers
(
5,
6,
27). The goal of the present study is to assess whether
CPAF is a functionally conserved protein in all chlamydial species.
The available chlamydial genome sequences have revealed that CPAF is encoded not only by the human chlamydial organisms C. trachomatis serovar D (23) and various C. pneumoniae strains (20) but also by the animal chlamydial species C. muridarum (20) and C. caviae (21). We further sequenced the CPAF genes carried by the C. trachomatis L2 serovar and C. psittaci 6BC strain by using primers derived from C. trachomatis serovar D and C. caviae GPIC CPAFs, respectively (data not shown). The oligonucleotide primers were synthesized with an automated ABI 3900 synthesizer, and the DNA sequencing was done with an automated ABI 3100 genetic analyzer via a service from a core facility at the University of Texas Health Science Center. An alignment analysis of the deduced CPAF amino acid sequences from nine different chlamydial strains, representing five major chlamydial species, has revealed that although the intraspecies identity is as high as 99%, the interspecies identity is as low as 46% (Table 1). A CPAF homologue was recently identified in the genome of a Parachlamydia sp. UWE25 strain isolated from an amoeba, and the alignment score between UWE25 and other chlamydial CPAFs is
30% (Table 1). We next expressed CPAF from five different chlamydial species as glutathione S-transferase (GST) fusion proteins by using a pGEX6p-2 vector system (5) and compared the GST-CPAF fusion proteins for their abilities to degrade the human transcription factor RFX5 in a cell-free degradation assay (Fig. 1). A rabbit anti-RFX5 (Rockland Immunochemicals Inc., Gilbertsville, Pa.) was used to detect the residual RFX5 on a Western blot (29). Due to the difficulty in obtaining UWE25 genomic DNA, we did not analyze the UWE25 CPAF in the present study. The GST-CPAF fusion proteins from all species were properly expressed and purified (Fig. 1, top panel), and all of the GST-CPAF fusion proteins, regardless of species, displayed a significant RFX5 degradation activity (Fig. 1, bottom panel). This observation has not only confirmed our previous observations that CPAF is active when expressed as GST fusion proteins in Escherichia coli due to a processing-triggered activation to a portion of the GST fusion proteins (5), but also more importantly, it has demonstrated that CPAF molecules encoded by different chlamydial species possess a similar proteolytic property.
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TABLE 1. Alignment scores of CPAF amino acid sequences from five different chlamydia and one parachlamydia species
|
We further evaluated whether CPAF is expressed by all of these
chlamydial species during infection (Fig.
2). A Western blot
was used to monitor CPAF expression as described previously
(
27,
29). The infected cells were lysed with an MLB buffer (consisting
of 25 mM HEPES, 150 mM NaCl, 1% Igepal, 10 mM MgCl
2, 1 mM EDTA,
10% glycerol, 1 mM Na
3VO
3, 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride,
60 µM leupeptin, and 0.1% aprotinin), and each lane was
loaded with the lysates from

5
x 10
4 cells. The nitrocellulose
membrane-immobilized proteins were detected with antibodies
recognizing different CPAFs. Due to CPAF sequence variations
between different chlamydial species, antibodies were first
screened for their specific recognition of each type of CPAF
(Fig.
2A). The monoclonal antibody (MAb) 100a recognized the
C-terminal fragments of CPAF from
C. trachomatis (Fig.
2A, panel
a, lanes 4 and 5), while the MAb 54b recognized the N-terminal
fragments of both CPAF from
C. trachomatis (Fig.
2A, panel b,
lanes 4 and 5) and CPAF from
C. muridarum species (Fig.
2A,
panel b, lane 3). We have previously shown that these CPAF C-
and N-terminal fragments can form active CPAF molecules in solutions
when they dimerize (
5,
6). Therefore, we can use the MAb 54b
to monitor active CPAF production in cells infected with either
C. trachomatis or
C. muridarum. As shown previously (
9,
12),
EB3.1, the MAb specific to CPAF from
C. pneumoniae species,
detected the C-terminal fragment of CPAF from
C. pneumoniae (Fig.
2A, panel c, lane 6). A mouse polyclonal antibody raised
with CPAF from
C. psittaci recognized both the C- and N-terminal
fragments of CPAF from
C. psittaci (Fig.
2A, panel d, lane 1)
and CPAF from
C. caviae species (Fig.
2A, panel d, lane 2) but
showed no cross-reactivity with any other CPAFs. We then used
the MAbs 54b and EB3.1 and the anti-CPAF from
C. psittaci antiserum
to monitor the expression of CPAF in cultures infected with
chlamydia for various periods of time (Fig.
2B). Active CPAF
fragments (C-terminal fragments, N-terminal fragments, or both)
were detected at both 24 and 48 h after infection with five
different strains representing four chlamydial species (Fig.
2B, lanes 1 to 10). The exception is
C. pneumoniae AR39. No
obvious CPAF or CPAF active fragment was detected in cells infected
with
C. pneumoniae for 24 h (Fig.
2B, lane 11). However, by
48 h after infection, a C-terminal fragment of CPAF from
C. pneumoniae was clearly detected (Fig.
2B, lane 12) and, importantly,
gradually increased as the infection progressed (Fig.
2B, lanes
13 to 15). The delayed expression of CPAF by AR39 obviously
reflects the slow growth rate of the
C. pneumoniae species.
The above observations have clearly demonstrated that the five
chlamydial species not only expressed CPAF proteins but also
produced active fragments during infection. To further confirm
the functionality of the chlamydia-expressed CPAFs, we used
a cell-free degradation assay (
27) to compare the chlamydia-infected
cell lysates (prepared and used in the above Western blot experiment)
for their ability to degrade RFX5 in a nuclear extract (Fig.
3). The RFX5 was significantly degraded by all lysates made
from chlamydia-infected cells regardless of the chlamydial species
that infected the cells (Fig.
3, lanes 3 to 32) but not from
normal HeLa cells (Fig.
3, lane 2). However, obvious variations
in the levels of enzymatic activity between CPAFs from different
species were noted, which may reflect the differences in the
amounts of active CPAF produced in different cultures. For example,
cells infected with AR39 for 24 h displayed no detectable RFX5
degradation activity (Fig.
3, lanes 23 and 24), but the degradation
activity gradually increased in AR39-infected cells as infection
progressed (Fig.
3, lanes 25 to 32). The activity patterns of
AR39 CPAF perfectly match the patterns of CPAF quantity detected
in Fig.
2B (lanes 11 to 15). These observations have confirmed
that functional CPAF was produced in cells infected with all
chlamydial species regardless of their differences in tissue
tropism and replication cycle.
We have thus demonstrated that in addition to the two human
chlamydial species
C. trachomatis and
C. pneumoniae, the species
C. muridarum,
C. psittaci, and
C. caviae, which mainly infect
animals, also encode and express functional CPAF. First, CPAF
genes were identified in all of these chlamydial species, and
the interspecies identity of CPAF at the amino acid level is
at least 46%. Second, the CPAF genes cloned from these animal
species degraded the human transcription factor RFX5 as efficiently
as the CPAF of human chlamydial species did, suggesting that
all CPAFs possess a similar proteolytic activity. Third, both
the active CPAF fragments and CPAF activity were detected in
cells infected with these animal-tropic chlamydial species,
indicating that the endogenous CPAF expressed by these chlamydial
species can undergo a similar activation process to acquire
the proteolytic ability. The fact that CPAF is a functionally
conserved molecule in all chlamydia species suggests that all
chlamydia species may be selected by a common selection pressure,
for example, to evade host adaptive immune recognition during
their intracellular replication. The human RFX5 was used as
the substrate for measuring the function of CPAF from all chlamydial
species because the constitutively expressed transcription factor
RFX5 is highly conserved between eukaryotic species. Besides
participating in evading host adaptive immunity, CPAF may also
have other important functions, since it has been recently shown
that the
Parachlamydia sp. UWE25 isolated from an amoeba encodes
a CPAF homologue with a

30% amino acid sequence identity to
CPAFs of chlamydial species. Although we do not yet know whether
the UWE25 CPAF possesses the ability to degrade human RFX5,
the identification of a CPAF homologue in UWE25 suggests that
CPAF may be required for chlamydia's own biological process
and/or for the intimate interactions with host cells. This is
because the single-celled amoeba does not have adaptive immunity
but may impose a stringent intracellular environment for chlamydial
replication. We have recently shown that CPAF from
C. trachomatis can cleave both head and tail domains off cytokeratin 8, a major
subunit of intermediate filaments in epithelial cells, which
may cause solubilization of a portion of the intermediate filaments
so that chlamydial inclusions can expand (
7). It will be interesting
to know whether UWE25 CPAF also possesses the ability to solubilize
the intracellular cytoskeleton of amoebas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by grants (to G.Z.) from the
U.S. National Institutes of Health (R01 AI47997 and R01 HL64883).

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 7703 Floyd Curl Dr., San Antonio, TX 78229. Phone: (210) 567-1169. Fax: (210) 567-0293. E-mail:
Zhongg{at}UTHSCSA.EDU.

Editor: F. C. Fang

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Infection and Immunity, March 2005, p. 1868-1872, Vol. 73, No. 3
0019-9567/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.73.3.1868-1872.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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