Project description:Bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) have important biological roles in pathogenesis and intercellular interactions, but a general mechanism of OMV formation is lacking. Here we show that the VacJ/Yrb ABC transport system, a proposed phospholipid (PL) transporter, is involved in OMV formation. Deletion or repression of VacJ/Yrb increases OMV production in two distantly related Gram-negative bacteria, Haemophilus influenzae and Vibrio cholerae. Within our studies we also analyzed the proteome of the OMV and outer membrane (OM) and found no massive alteration in Haemophilus influenzae Rd KW20, Rd ∆yrbE and Rd ∆vacJ. Lipidome analyses demonstrate that OMVs from VacJ/Yrb-defective mutants in H. influenzae are enriched in PLs and certain fatty acids. Furthermore, we demonstrate that OMV production and regulation of the VacJ/Yrb ABC transport system respond to iron starvation. Our results suggest a new general mechanism of OMV biogenesis based on PL accumulation in the outer leaflet of the outer membrane. This mechanism is highly conserved among Gram-negative bacteria, provides a means for regulation, can account for OMV formation under all growth conditions, and might have important pathophysiological roles in vivo.
Project description:Background: Haemophilus influenzae has an absolute aerobic growth requirement for heme and has developed multiple complex mechanisms to obtain this essential nutrient. Although an understanding of the heme acquisition mechanisms of H. influenzae is emerging, significant gaps remain to be elucidated. In a previous study we utilized H. influenzae strain Rd KW20 to demonstrate the utility of transcriptional profiling in defining the genes exhibiting altered transcription in response to environmental iron and heme levels. The current study expands upon those initial observations by determining the iron/heme regulons of two additional H. influenzae clinical isolates, i.e. the type b isolate 10810 and the nontypeable isolate R2866, to characterize the core iron/heme regulon of the species. Results: A microarray chip was designed to incorporate probes for all of the genes of H. influenzae isolates 10810 and R2866, and microarray studies were performed to compare gene expression under iron/heme-replete and iron/heme-restricted conditions for each isolate. Of 1820 ORFs on the array corresponding to R2866 genes, 363 were significantly differentially expressed. Of these 363 genes, 233 were maximally transcribed under iron/heme-replete conditions and 130 were preferentially transcribed in iron/heme-restricted conditions. Of the 1883 ORFs representing genes of strain10810, 351 were significantly differentially transcribed, 150 of these were preferentially transcribed in iron/heme-replete conditions and 201 were preferentially transcribed in iron/heme-restricted conditions. Comparison of the data sets indicated that 163 genes were similarly regulated in both isolates and that 74 of these also exhibited similar patterns of regulation in strain Rd KW20. Conclusion: This study provides evidence for a core of H. influenzae genes that are regulated by the availability of iron and/or heme in the growth environment. Elucidation of this core regulon provides targets for investigation of genes with an unrecognized role in iron and heme homeostasis, as well as other potential virulence determinants. In addition, the set of core genes potentially provides targets for therapeutic and vaccine designs since these products of these genes are likely to be preferentially expressed during growth in iron/heme restricted sites of the human body. This SuperSeries is composed of the following subset Series: GSE11349: Transcriptional profiling of FeHm effects on Haemophilus influenzae R2866 GSE11354: Transcriptional profiling of FeHm effects on Haemophilus influenzae 10810 Keywords: SuperSeries Refer to individual Series
Project description:The proteome of Haemophilus influenzae strain Rd KW20 was analyzed by liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with ion trap tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). This approach does not require a gel electrophoresis step and provides a rapidly developed snapshot of the proteome. In order to gain insight into the central metabolism of H. influenzae, cells were grown microaerobically and anaerobically in a rich medium and soluble and membrane proteins of strain Rd KW20 were proteolyzed with trypsin and directly examined by LC-MS/MS. Several different experimental and computational approaches were utilized to optimize the proteome coverage and to ensure statistically valid protein identification. Approximately 25% of all predicted proteins (open reading frames) of H. influenzae strain Rd KW20 were identified with high confidence, as their component peptides were unambiguously assigned to tandem mass spectra. Approximately 80% of the predicted ribosomal proteins were identified with high confidence, compared to the 33% of the predicted ribosomal proteins detected by previous two-dimensional gel electrophoresis studies. The results obtained in this study are generally consistent with those obtained from computational genome analysis, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and whole-genome transposon mutagenesis studies. At least 15 genes originally annotated as conserved hypothetical were found to encode expressed proteins. Two more proteins, previously annotated as predicted coding regions, were detected with high confidence; these proteins also have close homologs in related bacteria. The direct proteomics approach to studying protein expression in vivo reported here is a powerful method that is applicable to proteome analysis of any (micro)organism.
Project description:Haemophilus influenzae is a Gram negative bacterium that belongs to the family Pasteurellaceae, causes bacteremia, pneumonia and acute bacterial meningitis in infants. The emergence of multi-drug resistance H. influenzae strain in clinical isolates demands the development of better/new drugs against this pathogen. Our study combines a number of bioinformatics tools for function predictions of previously not assigned proteins in the genome of H. influenzae. This genome was extensively analyzed and found 1,657 functional proteins in which function of 429 proteins are unknown, termed as hypothetical proteins (HPs). Amino acid sequences of all 429 HPs were extensively annotated and we successfully assigned the function to 296 HPs with high confidence. We also characterized the function of 124 HPs precisely, but with less confidence. We believed that sequence of a protein can be used as a framework to explain known functional properties. Here we have combined the latest versions of protein family databases, protein motifs, intrinsic features from the amino acid sequence, pathway and genome context methods to assign a precise function to hypothetical proteins for which no experimental information is available. We found these HPs belong to various classes of proteins such as enzymes, transporters, carriers, receptors, signal transducers, binding proteins, virulence and other proteins. The outcome of this work will be helpful for a better understanding of the mechanism of pathogenesis and in finding novel therapeutic targets for H. influenzae.