Vol. 180, Issue 13, 3393-3399, July 1, 1998
Department of Molecular Genetics and
Microbiology, School of Medicine, State University of New York at
Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794-5222
Salmonella typhimurium uses of a type III protein
secretion system encoded at centisome 63 of its chromosome to deliver
effector molecules into the host cell. These proteins stimulate host
cell responses such as reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton and activation of transcription factors. One of these effector proteins is
SptP, a tyrosine phosphatase that causes disruption of the host cell
actin cytoskeleton. A characteristic feature of many substrates of type
III secretion systems is their association with specific cytoplasmic
chaperones which appears to be required for secretion and/or
translocation of these proteins into the host cell. We report here the
identification of SicP, a 13-kDa acidic polypeptide that is encoded
immediately upstream of sptP. A loss-of-function mutation
in sicP resulted in drastically reduced levels of SptP but
did not affect sptP expression, indicating that SicP exerts
its effect posttranscriptionally. Pulse-chase experiments demonstrated
that the loss of SicP leads to increased degradation of SptP. In
addition, we show that SicP binds to SptP directly and that the binding
site is located between residues 15 and 100 of the tyrosine
phosphatase. Taken together, these results indicate that SicP acts as a
specific chaperone for SptP.
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