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Journal of Bacteriology, December 2000, p. 6850-6853, Vol. 182, No. 23
Department of Microbiology, Colorado State
University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1677
Received 10 July 2000/Accepted 22 September 2000
Mycobacterium tuberculosis secretes a large number of
polypeptides with broad biological and immunological functions. We
describe here the characterization of a 28-kDa acid phosphatase of
M. tuberculosis (SapM) localized to the culture filtrate.
The mature protein demonstrated biochemical characteristics similar to
those of the bacterial nonspecific acid phosphatases. However, SapM
yielded significant sequence homology to fungal acid phosphatases and
not those of bacteria. Thus, SapM may represent a new class of
bacterial nonspecific acid phosphatases.
The complete Mycobacterium
tuberculosis genome was recently sequenced and annotated
(8). However, of the 3,924 putative gene products, only a
minority are assigned experimentally established physiological
functions. Thus, continued analyses of the M. tuberculosis proteome are required to fully elucidate the biology of this
intracellular pathogen. The most thoroughly studied gene products of
M. tuberculosis are the culture filtrate proteins (CFPs)
(reviewed in reference 6). The CFPs are proposed to
participate in intracellular survival (6) and are a primary
target of the host's protective T-cell response (21).
Several laboratories have added some definition to the myriad of
biological and enzymatic activities associated with the CFPs (4,
7, 15, 23). In the most comprehensive of these studies, Raynaud
et al. (23) described 22 enzymatic activities. However, the
molecular identities and characteristics of the enzymes responsible for
these activities were not elucidated. One of the activities identified
was that of an acid phosphatase.
One mechanism of intracellular survival employed by M. tuberculosis is the modulation of host cell activities, such as
intracellular vesicle fusion, phagosome maturation, and phagosome
acidification (reviewed in reference 27). Although
the specific proteins of M. tuberculosis that modulate
macrophage activity remain elusive, recent studies of other
intracellular pathogens demonstrate that acid phosphatases are
important to this aspect of microbial pathogenicity (2, 24, 25,
28). Thus, we believe that such an activity may also facilitate
host cell modulation by M. tuberculosis. As a first step in
testing this hypothesis, the presence of acid phosphatase activity in
the culture filtrate of M. tuberculosis was confirmed and a
28-kDa protein possessing this activity was purified and characterized.
Purification and identification of the acid phosphatase.
To
identify and isolate a secreted acid phosphatase, a culture filtrate of
M. tuberculosis cells grown to late log phase was harvested
(9) and dialyzed against 0.1 M sodium acetate (pH 6.0).
Initial evaluation of this culture filtrate for phosphatase activity,
using p-nitrophenyl phosphate (pNPP) as the
substrate (5), indicated the presence of weak activity (750 nmol of p-nitrophenol [pNP]/min/mg of protein)
at pH 6.0. The culture filtrate was fractionated by cation-exchange
chromatography, and a single asymmetric peak of acid phosphatase
activity was eluted with about 0.3 M NaCl. Moreover, the acid
phosphatase activity was enriched 70.6-fold. Final purification of this
enzymatic activity was accomplished by hydrophobic-interaction
chromatography. This resulted in the isolation of a single polypeptide
with an apparent molecular mass of 28 kDa, as determined by
sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis
(SDS-PAGE) (Fig. 1A), and a
specific acid phosphatase activity of 86,290 nmol of
pNP/min/mg of protein.
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Secretion of an Acid Phosphatase (SapM) by Mycobacterium
tuberculosis That Is Similar to Eukaryotic Acid
Phosphatases
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FIG. 1.
Purification of acid phosphatase activity from culture
filtrate of M. tuberculosis. (A) Coomassie blue-stained
SDS-polyacrylamide gel (12% polyacrylamide) showing the purification
of the M. tuberculosis acid phosphatase. Lane 1, molecular
mass markers; lane 2, M. tuberculosis CFPs; lane 3, nonbinding proteins from cation-exchange chromatography; lane 4, a pool
of fractions 12 to 30 from cation-exchange chromatography; lane 5, purified SapM after hydrophobic-interaction chromatography. (B) Amino
acid sequence of the Rv3310 gene product (SapM). The solid line
indicates the N-terminal amino acid sequence obtained from the mature
protein. The bold sequences indicate individual peptides identified by
MS-MS analysis of a tryptic digest of purified SapM. The boxes indicate
His residues conserved in fungal acid phosphatase homologues.
Sequence homology of SapM. The amino acid sequence of the full-length SapM was subjected to a BLASTP search (32) against the nonredundant protein database (National Center for Biotechnology Information). This resulted in the identification of three sequences with 28 to 31% identity and 44 to 51% similarity to SapM. These homologous sequences belonged to a phosphate-repressible acid phosphatase from Penicillium chrysogenum (Pc-PhoA) (14), a pH 6.0-optimum acid phosphatase from Aspergillus (niger) ficuum (Af-PhoA) (11), and a potential acid phosphatase of Kluyveromyces lactis (Kl-PhoX) (13). Interestingly, no significant homology to any prokaryotic acid phosphatases was found. SapM also lacked sequence motifs of phosphothreonine-serine and protein tyrosine phosphatases (3), metallophosphoesterases (19), and histidine phosphatases (22). However, SapM did possess two His residues (position 93 and 204) that were conserved in highly homologous regions of the fungal acid phosphatases.
Oligomeric state, pH optimum, and kinetics of SapM. To determine whether SapM existed in a monomeric or oligomeric form, the purified protein (100 µg) was applied to a Sepharose 12 column (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech Inc.) and eluted with phosphate-buffered saline at a flow rate of 0.5 ml/min. A comparison of the SapM retention coefficient to those of protein standards (bovine serum albumin, 66 kDa; carbonic anhydrase, 29 kDa; cytochrome c, 12.4 kDa; and aprotinin, 6.5 kDa) yielded a relative molecular mass of 28.8 kDa. This value agreed well with the theoretical mass of the mature monomeric protein and that obtained by SDS-PAGE. Furthermore, the purified protein showed no oligomeric species by SDS-PAGE in cross-linking experiments with bis(sulfosuccinimidyl) suberate.
The pH optimum for the enzymatic hydrolysis of pNPP by SapM was determined using four buffer systems: 0.1 M sodium citrate (pH 3.0 to 5.0), 0.1 M sodium acetate (pH 5.5 to 6.5), 0.1 M Tris base (pH 7.0 to 8.0), and 0.1 M sodium bicarbonate (pH 8.5 to 9.0). The relative rate of hydrolysis of pNPP was determined by quantitation of released pNP (5) and Pi (20). Both methods yielded comparable results. Significant activity was observed between pH 5.5 and 8.0, and optimal activity was observed at pH 6.5 to 7.5. This optimal pH range is wider than that observed for other acid phosphatases, such as the homologous Af-PhoA (11) and those from Francisella tularensis (24) and Coxiella burnetii (2). However, it is similar to that observed for the bacterial nonspecific acid phosphatases (NSAPs) (26). The kinetic parameters for the hydrolysis of pNPP were determined using a 0.4 µM to 0.5 mM concentration range of pNPP in 0.1 M Tris buffer, pH 6.8. The Km was determined to be 0.43 mM, and the Vmax was 2.1 × 106 nmol of pNP/h/mg of protein.Range of substrates and inhibitors of SapM.
Twenty-one
compounds at a concentration of 1 mM were tested as substrates for
SapM, and their rates of hydrolysis were compared to that of
pNPP (Table 1). SapM
demonstrated equivalent activity against
-naphthyl phosphate,
another substrate commonly used to detect phosphatase activity. When
tested with naturally occurring molecules of physiological significance
to mycobacteria, the purified enzyme exhibited the highest activity
against phosphoenolpyruvate, glycerophosphate, GTP, NADPH,
phosphotyrosine, and trehalose-6-phosphate. In contrast, the enzyme
exhibited poor activity against glucose-6-phosphate, phosphothreonine,
and a number of nucleotides (NADP, ATP, AMP, and GMP). SapM was not
active against cysteamine phosphate, a substrate specific for alkaline
phosphatase. Similarly, no activity was detected against phospholipids
or the phospholipase substrate p-nitrophenylphosphorylcholine. Some acid
phosphatases, in particular a subgroup of histidine acid phosphatases,
also possess phytase activity (18). However, the rate of
hydrolysis of phytic acid by SapM was 15% of that for pNPP
(Table 1). This low activity for phytic acid led us to conclude that
SapM is not a phytase.
|
Subcellular localization of SapM.
Subcellular localization of
SapM was investigated by assessing tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase
activity in subcellular fractions (culture filtrate, cell wall, cell
membrane, and cytosol) of M. tuberculosis H37Rv (Table
2). Tartrate was included in these
reactions to minimize interference by acid phosphatases other than
SapM. The acid phosphatase activity partitioned predominantly with the
culture filtrate. However, a significant amount of activity was
detected in the cell membrane and cell wall fractions, but not in the
cytosol. In comparison, activity of isocitrate dehydrogenase, a
cytosolic enzyme, was observed primarily in the cytosol, with minor
activity detected in the culture filtrate (Table 2). The isocitrate
dehydrogenase activity associated with the extracellular milieu was
most likely due to some cellular autolysis of the culture (1). These data, combined with the sequence analysis of
SapM, prove that this is a true secreted protein of M. tuberculosis.
|
General conclusions. SapM is the first mycobacterial acid phosphatase to be identified and characterized at a molecular level. Only one other gene product of M. tuberculosis (Rv2577) is predicted to be an acid phosphatase (8). However, Rv2577 does not possess an export signal sequence (8). Thus, SapM appears to be the only secreted acid phosphatase of M. tuberculosis, a hypothesis that is supported by our observations. This enzyme also fits the description of bacterial NSAPs, a broad group of phosphatases consisting of secreted proteins that function in an acidic-to-neutral pH range and use a wide variety of organic phosphoesters as substrates (26). However, the amino acid sequence of SapM does not possess the signature motifs used to define any of the three classes of bacterial NSAPs, and in fact, this enzyme shows the greatest homology to several acid phosphatases of fungal origin. This is not surprising given that the investigation of bacterial NSAPs is still maturing (26) and that the class C NSAPs were recognized only recently as a distinct group (30). Thus, it would appear that SapM represents a new class of bacterial NSAPs. This report also provides strong evidence that SapM is an NSAP that may function as a histidine phosphatase. However, the lack of available data on SapM homologues underscores the need to perform detailed mechanistic studies and site-directed mutagenesis to determine the mode of action of SapM. Similarly, SapM deletion mutants are required to elucidate the precise physiological function of SapM and whether it contributes to the pathogenicity of M. tuberculosis.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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This work was supported by contract NO1 AI-75320 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH).
We thank Marc Keen and Preston Hill for assistance with bacterial cultures and preparation of crude culture filtrates and Patrick Brennan for his critique of this work.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1677. Phone: (970) 491-6549. Fax: (970) 491-1815. E-mail: jbelisle{at}cvmbs.colostate.edu.
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