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Infection and Immunity, June 1999, p. 3141-3145, Vol. 67, No. 6
The Maxwell Finland Laboratory for Infectious
Diseases, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of
Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts 02118
Received 8 December 1998/Returned for modification 13 January
1999/Accepted 12 March 1999
The fbpABC locus of Neisseria gonorrhoeae
has been proposed to encode a periplasmic protein-dependent iron
transport system. Although the function of the gonococcal FbpA protein
has been well characterized and its role as a periplasmic binding
protein is well defined, little is known about the function of the FbpB and FbpC proteins. To define the function of the gonococcal FbpC protein, an N. gonorrhoeae F62 fbpC mutant was
constructed by insertional inactivation with the kanamycin gene. The
N. gonorrhoeae F62 fbpC mutant was observed to
grow with heme, transferrin, or ferric nitrate as the sole exogenous
iron source, indicating that the gonococcal FbpC protein is not
absolutely required for growth with these iron sources. In previous
studies we were unable to detect fbpB- or
fbpC-specific transcripts by Northern analysis. Reverse
transcription-PCR analysis with RNA obtained from N. gonorrhoeae F62 grown under iron-replete and -depleted conditions
detected fbpA and fbpAB transcripts but failed
to detect fbpC or fbpBC transcripts. These
results indicate that FbpC does not play a pivotal role in iron
transport in N. gonorrhoeae and suggest that additional ABC
transport systems are functional in the gonococcus for the acquisition
of iron.
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
FbpC Is Not Essential for Iron Acquisition in
Neisseria gonorrhoeae
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: The Maxwell
Finland Laboratory for Infectious Diseases, Boston University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118. Phone: (617) 414-5282. Fax: (617) 414-5280. E-mail:
caroline.genco{at}bmc.org.
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