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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2007, p. 691-705, Vol. 189, No. 3
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00921-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Morphogenesis of the Bacillus anthracis Spore{triangledown}

Rebecca Giorno,1 Joel Bozue,2 Christopher Cote,2 Theresa Wenzel,1 Krishna-Sulayman Moody,2 Michael Mallozzi,1 Matthew Ryan,1 Rong Wang,3 Ryszard Zielke,4 Janine R. Maddock,4 Arthur Friedlander,5 Susan Welkos,2 and Adam Driks1*

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois 60153,1 Bacteriology Division, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland 21702-5011,2 Department of Biological, Chemical, and Physical Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois 60616,3 Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109,4 Headquarters, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland 21702-50115

Received 26 June 2006/ Accepted 1 November 2006

Bacillus spp. and Clostridium spp. form a specialized cell type, called a spore, during a multistep differentiation process that is initiated in response to starvation. Spores are protected by a morphologically complex protein coat. The Bacillus anthracis coat is of particular interest because the spore is the infective particle of anthrax. We determined the roles of several B. anthracis orthologues of Bacillus subtilis coat protein genes in spore assembly and virulence. One of these, cotE, has a striking function in B. anthracis: it guides the assembly of the exosporium, an outer structure encasing B. anthracis but not B. subtilis spores. However, CotE has only a modest role in coat protein assembly, in contrast to the B. subtilis orthologue. cotE mutant spores are fully virulent in animal models, indicating that the exosporium is dispensable for infection, at least in the context of a cotE mutation. This has implications for both the pathophysiology of the disease and next-generation therapeutics. CotH, which directs the assembly of an important subset of coat proteins in B. subtilis, also directs coat protein deposition in B. anthracis. Additionally, however, in B. anthracis, CotH effects germination; in its absence, more spores germinate than in the wild type. We also found that SpoIVA has a critical role in directing the assembly of the coat and exosporium to an area around the forespore. This function is very similar to that of the B. subtilis orthologue, which directs the assembly of the coat to the forespore. These results show that while B. anthracis and B. subtilis rely on a core of conserved morphogenetic proteins to guide coat formation, these proteins may also be important for species-specific differences in coat morphology. We further hypothesize that variations in conserved morphogenetic coat proteins may play roles in taxonomic variation among species.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Loyola University Medical Center, 2160 South First Avenue, Bldg. 105, Rm. 3820, Maywood, IL 60153. Phone: (708) 216-3706. Fax: (708) 216-9574. E-mail: adriks{at}lumc.edu.

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 17 November 2006.

Journal of Bacteriology, February 2007, p. 691-705, Vol. 189, No. 3
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00921-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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