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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2004, p. 1215-1219, Vol. 186, No. 4
0021-9193/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.4.1215-1219.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
InvB Is Required for Type III-Dependent Secretion of SopA in Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium
Kristin Ehrbar, Siegfried Hapfelmeier, Bärbel Stecher, and Wolf-Dietrich Hardt*
Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Received 2 September 2003/
Accepted 11 November 2003
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ABSTRACT
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The Salmonella effector protein SopA is translocated into host cells via the SPI-1 type III secretion system (TTSS) and contributes to enteric disease. We found that the chaperone InvB binds to SopA and slightly stabilizes it in the bacterial cytosol and that it is required for its transport via the SPI-1 TTSS.
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INTRODUCTION
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Type III secretion systems (TTSS) are found in many pathogenic gram-negative bacteria and mediate the injection of an array of effector proteins into the host cell cytoplasm. Once injected, the effector proteins modulate host cell signaling cascades for the benefit of the pathogen. The secretion mechanism of these effector proteins and their secretion signals are still poorly understood. It has been shown that secretion and translocation of many effector proteins require a cognate chaperone (9, 17). These chaperones usually bind to the N-terminal region and exert various functions on their cognate effector protein, i.e., cytosolic stability (10, 20, 21), transcriptional regulation (4, 5, 19), prevention of premature interactions (7, 12, 13), maintenance of the effector in a secretion-competent state (18, 21), and recognition by the TTSS (1). Type III secretion (TTS) chaperones do not exhibit sequence similarities but share some common features. They are generally small, acidic proteins with an amphipathic C-terminal
-helix and are often encoded next to or in close vicinity to the effector protein (9, 17). In contrast, the chaperone Spa15 of Shigella spp. is encoded within an operon encoding essential components of the TTS apparatus and binds to not just one but several effector proteins which do not show sequence similarities (16). Due to these special features, Spa15 is thought to represent a new class of TTS chaperone (16, 17).
The Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1) of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium encodes the protein InvB, which is homologous to Spa15 of Shigella spp. InvB is a chaperone for the SPI-1-encoded effector SipA/SspA (2). Recently members of our group have shown that InvB also binds to SopE and SopE2, two effector proteins encoded outside of SPI-1 but secreted in a SPI-1-dependent manner (7a). Secretion and translocation of SipA, SopE, and SopE2 depend on InvB. Based on this observation, we hypothesized that InvB might be required for secretion of additional effector proteins of serovar Typhimurium.
To address this question, we expressed a glutathione S-transferase (GST)-InvB fusion protein (pM672) (7a) in the mutant strain M574 (invB::aphT
sopE
sopE2
sopB
sipA) (7a), which lacks all known InvB binding effector proteins and the chromosomally encoded invB. This strain also lacks the effector protein gene sopB. However, SopB/SigD is transported via its own cognate chaperone, PipC/SigE (6). Therefore, the sopB mutation was not expected to affect any InvB-effector protein interactions. M574 (pM672) was grown overnight in Luria broth containing 0.3 M NaCl, diluted 1:20 into fresh medium, and grown for another 4 h at 37°C (referred to as SPI-1 inducing conditions). Cells were lysed in a French pressure cell, and GST-InvB and bound proteins were purified on glutathione-Sepharose beads from the cleared cell lysate. Aliquots from every step of the purification procedure were analyzed on a Coomassie brilliant blue-stained SDS gel. A polypeptide with an apparent molecular weight of 80 kDa was copurified with GST-InvB (Fig. 1). The band was excised from the gel, trypsin digested, and eluted as described recently (7a). The protein was identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry fingerprint analysis as SopA (12 matching peptides, 21% covered sequence), a known effector protein, which is encoded outside of SPI-1 but translocated in a SPI-1-dependent manner (22). Although the biochemical activity of SopA is still unknown, it was shown to play a role in bovine enterocolitis models (22, 23).

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FIG. 1. Pull-down assay to isolate InvB binding proteins. GST-InvB (34 kDa) and bound proteins were purified from cleared cell lysate by incubation with glutathione (GSH)-Sepharose beads. Bound proteins larger than the GST-InvB fusion protein were analyzed by SDS-PAGE and Coomassie brilliant blue staining. wc, whole culture before harvesting of the cells; FP pe, resuspended pelleted cell debris after lysis using a French pressure cell; FP sup, cleared French pressure cell lysate; GSH sup, cleared cell lysate after binding of GST-InvB and its associated proteins; washing, supernatant after the first and seventh wash of the GSH-Sepharose beads; co-purified, GSH-Sepharose beads.
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The binding of SopA to InvB was verified by a coimmunoprecipitation experiment. For this purpose, a suicide vector (pM261) encoding a C-terminally M45-tagged version of sopA was integrated into the chromosome of SL1344 to generate M612, which expresses sopAM45 under its native promoter (Table 1).
M612 was grown under SPI-1 inducing conditions and lysed in a French pressure cell. SopAM45 binding proteins were precipitated with a mouse monoclonal anti-M45 antibody from cleared bacterial lysates as described previously (7a). Aliquots from every step of the precipitation procedure were analyzed by Western blotting using a polyclonal anti-InvB antiserum (7a) and a mouse monoclonal anti-M45 antibody (14). InvB was coimmunoprecipitated with SopAM45 from M612 but not from the control lysate of an isogenic strain (M712) lacking amino acids 2 to 782 of sopA (Fig. 2, lane f). This result supports the notion that InvB binds (directly or indirectly) to SopA.
InvB has been described as a chaperone necessary for secretion of the effector proteins SipA (2), SopE, and SopE2 (7a). This suggested that InvB might also be required for secretion of SopA. To explore this hypothesis, we have constructed the isogenic serovar Typhimurium ATCC 14028 strains M619 (wild type) (2), M618 (
invB) (2), and M623 (invC::aphT), which all harbor an M45 epitope-tagged sopA gene in the chromosome (Table 1). The strains were grown under SPI-1 inducing conditions, and SopAM45 secretion was analyzed by Western blotting as described elsewhere (7a). SopAM45 was secreted from the wild-type strain M619 but not from the secretion-deficient strain M623 (invC::aphT), lacking the ATPase InvC (8), and the
invB strain M618 (Fig. 3, upper panel). The latter secretion defect could be complemented using the invB expression vector pM250, which expresses invB under control of an arabinose-inducible promoter (7a). Reprobing with a rabbit polyclonal antiserum raised against amino acids 49 to 543 of the SPI-1 effector protein SptP verified that the invB deletion had no general effect on the TTSS (Fig. 3, middle panel).
The cytoplasmic SopAM45 pool was slightly lower in the
invB strain M618 than in the wild-type strain, M619 (Fig. 3). This indicated that InvB might play a role in stabilization or expression of SopA. To examine the cytoplasmic stability of SopAM45, one has to consider that InvB might have two functions: stabilization of cytoplasmic SopA and transport of SopA via the SPI-1 TTSS. If significant amounts of SopA protein become transported to the outside during the course of the assay, this fraction might become protected from degradation by Salmonella proteases. To exclude this, we have analyzed the role of invB in stabilization of cytoplasmic SopAM45 in secretion-deficient strains. The invB open reading frame is overlapping with the invC open reading frame. Therefore, it was not possible to combine the
invB and invC::aphT alleles (Fig. 3; Table 1) by P22 transduction. For this reason we constructed the secretion-deficient spaO::aphT strain (M629), lacking an essential subunit of the export apparatus (3) encoded 2.7 kb downstream of invB, and the
invB spaO::aphT double mutant (M630).
We then analyzed the cytosolic stability of SopAM45 in the
invB strain M618 (sopAM45
invB; does not secrete SopAM45 [Fig. 3]), the secretion-deficient mutant M629 (sopAM45 spaO::aphT), and the double mutant M630 (sopAM45 spaO::aphT
invB) (Table 1). As a control we also examined the cytosolic stability of SopAM45 in the wild-type strain M619 (sopAM45). M619, M618, M629, and M630 were grown under SPI-1 inducing conditions, and protein biosynthesis was inhibited by addition of spectinomycin (final concentration, 200 µg/ml). Aliquots were removed 0, 5, 20, 40, and 90 min after spectinomycin addition. Western blot analysis of bacterial pellets revealed that SopAM45 degradation was slightly accelerated in the absence of InvB (Fig. 4A, compare M629 and M630 or M618 and M629). In the wild-type strain background (M619), the amount of bacterium-associated SopAM45 was slightly higher than in the secretion-deficient strain M629 at the beginning of the experiment (0' to 20') but decreased faster (Fig. 4A). As discussed above, this is probably due to cumulative effects of secretion of SopAM45 from M619 into the culture supernatant and degradation. For this reason we could not base any conclusions about the role of InvB in SopA stabilization on this strain.
The stability of the effector protein SptP (cognate chaperone is SicP) was not affected by the invB mutation (Fig. 4). Altogether, these data suggested that InvB has a slight effect on stabilization of SopA in the bacterial cytosol.
To verify that the invB expression level is not altered in the secretion-deficient mutants, we performed a Western blot analysis using the strains M619 (sopAM45), M618 (sopAM45
invB), M629 (sopAM45 spaO::aphT), M630 (sopAM45 spaO::aphT
invB), and M623 (sopAM45 invC::aphT) (Table 1). This analysis confirmed that the amount of cytosolic InvB is not altered in the secretion-deficient mutants M629 (sopAM45 spaO::aphT) and M623 (sopAM45 invC::aphT) and that InvB is absent from the invB deletion strains M618 (sopAM45
invB) and (sopAM45 spaO::aphT
invB) (Fig. 5).
To analyze whether invB reduces transcription of sopA, we constructed lacZ transcriptional reporter strains. The lacZ cassette of pSB1040 (kindly provided by D. Zhou and J. E. Galán) was cloned downstream of the sopAM45 stop codon into pM261 (see above) to create the suicide vector pM265 (Table 1). pM265 was integrated into the chromosome of CS401, yielding M635 (sopAM45 lacZ). The control strains M636 (
invB), M637 (spaO::aphT), M638 (
invB spaO::aphT), and M639 (invC::aphT) were constructed by P22 transduction of the sopA::pM265 allele (Table 1).
Thus, we could use ß-galactosidase assays to study sopA promoter activity. The ß-galactosidase activity was determined in at least eight independent experiments, and statistical analysis was performed using the exact Mann-Whitney U test. We found that sopA transcription was in the same order of magnitude for all strains, analyzed (Fig. 6). Disruption of invB did not decrease ß-galactosidase activity. Rather, ß-galactosidase activity was slightly but significantly increased in M636 (
invB) (P < 0.001), M639 (invC::aphT) (P = 0.001), and M638 (
invB spaO::aphT) (P < 0.001) (Fig. 6). Therefore, the decreased SopAM45 protein levels in the cytoplasm of an invB mutant (Fig. 3) are attributable to a slightly decreased protein stability but not to transcriptional down regulation. However, the reasons for the slight augmentation of transcription in M636, M638, and M639 remain to be analyzed.

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FIG. 6. Effect of an invB deletion on transcription of sopAM45. Transcription of sopAM45 was measured using transcriptional lacZ reporter constructs in standard ß-galactosidase activity assays. ß-Galactosidase activities were determined in at least eight independent experiments. Bars indicate the median.
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In summary, the copurification and coimmunoprecipitation experiments demonstrate that InvB binds directly or indirectly to SopA. In the absence of InvB, SopA is not secreted and its intracellular stability is decreased. Although SipA, SopE/SopE2, and SopA do not share sequence similarities, they all require InvB for their transport via the SPI-1 TTSS (2, 7a; also this study).
TTS chaperones have been divided into three classes: class I, chaperones which associate with effector proteins; class II, chaperones which associate with translocators; and class III, chaperones of the flagellar system (17). Due to their unique features, InvB and its homologs Spa15 (Shigella spp.), YsaK (Yersinia spp.), and InvB (Sodalis spp.) are thought to represent a new family of TTS chaperones. Therefore, they have been assigned to the new subclass IB, which represents chaperones that bind several different effectors (17). This classification was based on experimental evidence from Shigella flexneri (16). Interestingly, Page and Parsot have hypothesized that InvB, like Spa15, might also associate with different unrelated proteins (15). This was confirmed by our findings that InvB is a chaperone not only for SipA (2) but also for SopE, SopE2 (7a), and SopA (this work).
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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We thank Günther Paesold, Markus Schlumberger, and Cosima Pelludat for critically reviewing the manuscript, Samuel I. Miller for providing strains, Shiva P. Singh for providing the anti-OmpC antibody, and Rene Brunisholz for the matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry analysis.
The project was funded in part by the Swiss National Foundation.
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FOOTNOTES
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich, Schmelzbergstrasse 7, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Fax: 41-1-632-1129. Phone: 41-1-632-5143. E-mail: hardt{at}micro.biol.ethz.ch. 
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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2004, p. 1215-1219, Vol. 186, No. 4
0021-9193/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.4.1215-1219.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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