Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Journal of Bacteriology, October 2007, p. 6806-6815, Vol. 189, No. 19
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.00560-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

,
Meng Qi,
Joshua Gong,
Emmanuel E. Egbosimba,¶ and
Cecil W. Forsberg*
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
Received 12 April 2007/ Accepted 12 July 2007
|
|
|---|
|
|
|---|
Similar to the case with other anaerobic cellulolytic bacteria, adhesion of F. succinogenes cells to cellulose appears to be a prerequisite for rapid and efficient cellulose hydrolysis by this organism (30). This claim is supported by the observation that carboxymethylcellulose, which blocks adhesion to cellulose, also blocked cellulose degradation (25). Gong and Forsberg (12) isolated nonadherent mutants of F. succinogenes S85 that either did not degrade crystalline cellulose or degraded cellulose more slowly than S85. Treatment of S85 cells with proteolytic enzymes markedly reduced their adhesion ability, showing that some protease-sensitive proteins on the cell surface were involved in the adhesion. However, without suitable separation methodologies and with a lack of techniques to identify noncatalytic proteins, it was challenging to pursue the research at that time.
Gong and Forsberg (13) developed a sodium chloride washing technique to cleanly separate outer membranes (OMs) of F. succinogenes free from other cellular fractions. Since adhesion to cellulose and cellulose hydrolysis involve an intimate association of the OM surface with cellulose, we have analyzed the OM proteins from F. succinogenes S85 grown on cellulose and on glucose and from the two nonadherent mutants, Ad1 and Ad4, grown on glucose in order to identify proteins with potential roles in adhesion to cellulose and in cellulose hydrolysis. The application of mass spectroscopy analysis of trypsin digests of the separated proteins in conjunction with access to the genome sequence of F. succinogenes S85 has provided the opportunity to identify these novel proteins. Therefore, the goal of this study was to identify OM proteins that have potential roles in initial attachment of cells to cellulose and that are either absent from nonadherent mutants or are induced in the wild-type strain S85 by growth on cellulose.
(Research presented here is described in the Ph.D. theses of H. S. Jun, M. Qi, J. Gong, and E. E. Egbosimba, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.)
|
|
|---|
ASC was prepared as described by Wood (51). Briefly, 5 g of Avicel cellulose PH105 was mixed with 10 ml of H3PO4 (85% [wt/vol]) and stored in ice for 1 h with occasional stirring. The mixture was poured into 4 liters ice-cold distilled water and left in ice for 30 min. The swollen cellulose was washed five times with 1.5 liters ice-cold distilled H2O, followed by 1 liter of 1% (wt/vol) NaHCO3 solution. The swollen cellulose was washed with ice-cold distilled water until the pH was neutral. A portion of the swollen cellulose was lyophilized to determine the concentration.
Growth was monitored by the determination of total cellular proteins in the culture. Samples of culture were heated at 100°C for 10 min in 0.5 M sodium hydroxide to solubilize cellular proteins. The residual cellulose particles were removed by centrifugation and the protein concentration in the supernatant determined by the method of Bradford (3) with bovine serum albumin (fraction V) dissolved in 0.5 M sodium hydroxide as the standard.
Carbohydrate determination. Cellulose sedimented from the culture by centrifugation at 10,000 x g for 10 min was solubilized in 67% (wt/vol) sulfuric acid as described by Updegraff (49) and quantified using the phenol sulfuric acid method (6) for soluble carbohydrates. Glucose was used as the standard. Soluble sugars remaining in solution after centrifugation were assayed by the same procedure.
Assay of bacterial adhesion to cellulose. Bacterial adhesion to cellulose was measured by the turbidity-based method as described by Gong and Forsberg (12). Briefly, a cell suspension (2 ml) grown in CDM containing 0.5% (wt/vol) glucose until the optical density at 675 nm reached 2.0 was thoroughly mixed by inversion with an equal volume of CDM containing 20% (wt/vol) Avicel cellulose PH105. The mixture was left stationary at room temperature for 60 min to allow cellulose to settle. The optical density of the supernate was measured at 675 nm. The calculation of percent adhesion was performed according to the equation % adhesion = [1 – (OD675 of cellulose supernate x 1.8)/2] x 100, where OD675 is the optical density at 675 nm.
A factor of 1.8 was used instead of 2 to correct for the volume of cellulose in the suspension (12).
Isolation of OM. The OM was prepared as described previously (13) from 4-liter volumes of culture. Briefly, the cells were sedimented at 9,000 x g for 15 min. The cells were resuspended in 300 ml of 50 mM piperazine-N,N'-bis(2-ethanesulfonic acid) (PIPES) buffer (pH 6.7) including 0.5 M NaCl, and the suspension was incubated at 4°C for 5 min with shaking at 150 rpm, followed by centrifugation (23,000 x g, 20 min). The washing step to collect OMs as well as periplasmic fractions was repeated three times. The supernatant containing OMs and periplasmic proteins was subjected to ultracentrifugation (Beckman) at 100,000 x g for 1 h to sediment OMs. The sedimented OMs were resuspended in PIPES buffer, pH 6.7, and membrane protein quantified as described by Bradford (3). In the case of cultures grown on cellulose, residual cellulose was removed by centrifugation at 500 x g for 5 min before cells were harvested. All centrifugations were performed at 4°C.
2-DE. OM proteins were precipitated from a 1.5-ml suspension (1 mg protein·ml–1) by addition of a 10-fold volume of acetone precooled to –20°C. The precipitated proteins were washed once with the same volume of precooled acetone. The proteins were air-dried for 15 min and stored at –20°C prior to use.
The acetone-precipitated OM proteins (approximately 1.5 mg) were solubilized in 300 µl of isoelectric focusing (IEF) solution (7 M urea, 2 M thiourea, 2% [wt/vol] amidosulfobetaine 14 [4], 2 mM tributyl phosphine [TBP] [14], 2% [vol/vol] Biolyte 3-10 [Bio-Rad]) and incubated at room temperature for 1 h. The traces of insoluble materials were removed by centrifugation using an airfuge (100,000 x g, 20 min; Beckman). The 300 µl of solubilized OM proteins were applied to 17-cm immobilized pH gradient (IPG) strips with a range from pI 3 to 10. The strips were rehydrated at 50 V at 20°C for 12 h in a Protean IEF cell (Bio-Rad), and then IEF was performed by using the following steps: (i) conditioning step to remove salt ions and charged contaminants at 250 V for 20 min; (ii) rapid voltage ramping step at 10,000 V for 3 h; and (iii) final focusing step at 10,000 V for 6 h. The current did not exceed 50 µA/strip. The isoelectric focused strips were equilibrated in 15 ml of 50 mM Tris buffer (pH 8.8) containing 6 M urea, 2% (wt/vol) sodium dodecyl sulfate, 30% (vol/vol) glycerol, 5 mM TBP, and a trace of bromophenol blue for 30 min. The reduced IPG strips were subjected to alkylation for 20 min in 15 ml of the same buffer, except the TBP was replaced by 135 mM iodoacetamide. The equilibration steps were performed at room temperature with gentle shaking. The second dimension of electrophoresis was then performed by using a PROTEAN XL electrophoresis unit (Bio-Rad) according to the manufacturer's instruction manual. Briefly, the equilibrated IPG strips were loaded on 4% stacking gels and 12% separating gels with the Precision Plus broad-range protein standard (Bio-Rad) and covered with low-melting-point agarose gel. Electrophoresis was conducted at 50 V for 16 h, and the gels were stained with colloidal Coomassie blue G-250 (37). The 2-DE gels were digitalized and analyzed using a GS-800 calibrated densitometer and PDQuest (version 7.2.0) software (Bio-Rad).
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and identification of proteins.
Protein spots of interest were manually excised from the gels, sliced into 1-by1-mm pieces, and washed three times, 5 min each, with shaking in milliQ water. The gel pieces were destained with a solution containing 50 mM NH4HCO3 in 50% (vol/vol) acetonitrile by mixing on a vortex apparatus until the gel pieces were transparent. The gel pieces were dehydrated with 100 µl of 100% acetonitrile for 5 min with occasional mixing, followed by reduction with 100 µl of 10 mM dithiothreitol in 100 mM NH4HCO3 at 50°C for 30 min. The gel pieces were dehydrated with 100 µl of 100% acetonitrile again and alkylated with 100 µl of 55 mM iodoacetamide in 100 mM NH4HCO3 for 60 min at 22°C in the dark. The gel particles were washed with 200 µl of 100 mM NH4HCO3 for 15 min with occasional mixing on a vortex apparatus, dehydrated with 100% acetonitrile, and dried using a Speedvac for 20 min. The gel pieces were rehydrated in
20 ml of trypsin solution (20 µg·ml–1; Sigma) in 36 mM NH4HCO3-8.1% acetonitrile (vol/vol) for 1 h at 22°C, followed by removal of the excess of trypsin solution. The rehydrated gel pieces were covered with 50 µl of 50 mM NH4HCO3 and incubated at 37°C for 16 to 18 h. The peptide extraction was performed in three sequential extractions, the first with 50 µl milliQ water and the following two with 5% (vol/vol) trifluoroacetic acid in 50% (vol/vol) acetonitrile. The supernatants from each extraction were pooled in a 0.65-ml siliconized tube. The combined supernatant were concentrated to 10 to
15 µl using the Speed Vac and desalted using a C18 ZipTip (Millipore) pipette tip as described in the instruction manual. The desalted peptides were submitted to the Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility of the University of Guelph for matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Peptide spectra were acquired using a Bruker Reflex III MALDI-TOF spectrometer in reflectron detection mode with external calibration. Peptide mass profiles were analyzed by using the MS-FIT ProteinProspector program (UCSF Mass Spectrometry [prospector.ucsf.edu/]) against the open reading frame (ORF) FASTA file of the S85 genome.
Samples for tandem mass spectrometry to obtain peptide masses and internal amino acid sequences were submitted to the Advanced Protein Technology Centre of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (www.sickkids.on.ca/APTC). Peptide fragments were identified by reference to the F. succinogenes genome.
Binding of solubilized OM proteins to cellulose. OM proteins were solubilized in PIPES buffer, pH 6.7, containing 0.2% (wt/vol) amidosulfobetaine 14 at 22°C for 2 h. Any insoluble material was removed by centrifugation at 100,000 x g for 20 min. The solubilized OM proteins (approximately 0.2 mg) of S85 grown on either cellulose or glucose and Ad1 and Ad4 grown on glucose were mixed with either 40 mg of autoclaved Avicel cellulose PH 105 or 1% (wt/vol) of ASC for 30 min at 22°C in 1 ml of 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, with end-over-end rotation at 8 rpm. Following centrifugation at 5,000 x g for 2 min, the sedimented cellulose was subjected to two sequential washes, first with 1 ml of 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, and second with 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, containing 1 M NaCl. The proteins bound to cellulose were eluted with 50 µl of the sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) sample buffer at 100°C for 5 min. The eluates were separated on an 8-to-20%-linear-gradient SDS-PAGE, followed by staining with colloidal Coomassie blue (37). Protein bands were excised and subjected to in-gel trypsin digestion and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for identification as described previously.
Cloning, overexpression, and purification of chloride-stimulated cellobiosidase (ClCBase) (Cel10A). The gene coding for the ClCBase protein was cloned into the expression vector pQE-80L (QIAGEN) and the recombinant fusion protein, and rcClCBase was over-expressed in Escherichia coli Rosetta Gami(DE3) and purified as described by Qi et al. (40).
Purification of the 180-kDa CBP. The 180-kDa cellulose-binding protein (CBP) was purified from nonsedimentable extracellular culture fluid of strain S85 cells grown on glucose as the carbohydrate source after concentration using a PM-10 membrane. The medium components were exchanged to 20 mM triethanolamine (TEA) buffer (pH 7.0) by concentration and dilution four times with the buffer, and the sample was applied to a DEAE Sepharose column equilibrated in the same buffer and bound proteins eluted with 20 mM TEA buffer containing a 0 to 1 M NaCl gradient. Fractions containing the 180-kDa protein were then applied to a phenyl Sepharose column in 20 mM TEA buffer with an (NH4)2SO4 gradient from 1 to 0 M. Fractions containing the CBP were further purified by chromatofocusing. The chromatofocusing step employed a Polybuffer exchanger 94 (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) in a column (1 by 20 cm) equilibrated with 25 mM piperazine-HCl buffer (pH 5.5) containing 1 mM of EDTA. A 10-fold dilution of Polybuffer (pH 4.0) (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) served as the eluent. The presence of protein with a molecular mass of 180 kDa was ascertained by SDS-PAGE analysis.
Protein estimation. The protein concentration was determined as described by Bradford (3) using bovine serum albumin (Sigma) as the standard, except for solutions containing urea, where the bincinchoninic acid method was used (45).
Production and purification of antibodies. rcClCBase purified from inclusion bodies by using an immobilized metal affinity column under denaturing conditions was further purified to homogeneity by using 10% SDS-PAGE, nonfixing KCl staining (36), and gel elution at 5 mA for 16 h using an electroeluter (Bio-Rad) as described in the instruction manual. The purified rcClCBase, which was more than 98% pure as determined by SDS-PAGE with colloidal Coomassie blue staining, was used for production of antibodies.
A rabbit was immunized with rcClCBase by intramuscular injections of 0.5 ml of a mixture of protein (2 mg/ml) and Freund's incomplete adjuvant (50:50) at each of two sites. A second set of injections was performed at 4 weeks, and the rabbit was bled at 7 weeks by saline perfusion. The blood was incubated without agitation for 2 h at 37°C and left at 4°C overnight, followed by centrifugation at 10,000 x g for 10 min at 4°C. The serum was removed, supplemented with 0.02% sodium azide, and stored at –80°C. The antiserum was purified to obtain the monospecific anti-rcClCBase antibody as described previously (18).
The polyclonal antiserum against the native ClCBase (18) was also used in this study.
Western immunoblots. Western immunoblotting was performed as previously described (18) except that monospecific anti-rcClCBase antibodies (1:150 dilution) were used as the primary antibody and goat anti-rabbit immunoglobulin G alkaline phosphatase-conjugated antibodies (1:30,000 dilution; Sigma-Aldrich Canada) were used as the secondary antibody. Detection was performed as described by McGavin et al. (35). The Quantity One 1-D analysis software (version 4.4.1; Bio-Rad) was used for quantification.
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers. The nucleotide sequences of the identified genes have been deposited in the GenBank database under accession numbers EU055570 to EU055603.
|
|
|---|
![]() View larger version (26K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 1. Growth of F. succinogenes S85 and its adhesion-defective mutants, Ad1 and Ad4. on different forms of cellulose. (A) ASC, 0.2% (wt/vol). (B) Avicel cellulose, 0.3% (wt/vol). Symbols: , protein content; , amount of residual cellulose; , soluble carbohydrates.
|
![]() View larger version (13K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 2. Binding of S85, Ad1, and Ad4 cells to different concentrations of ASC (A) and to Avicel cellulose PH105 (B). Adhesion was determined by the turbidity adhesion assay (n = 2).
|
![]() View larger version (114K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 3. Comparative analysis of solubilized OM proteins binding to either acid-swollen (left panel) or Avicel (right panel) cellulose. Proteins bound to cellulose were eluted with SDS sample buffer and separated by SDS-PAGE. Proteins excised from the SDS-PAGE gels and analyzed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry are indicated by arrowheads and numbers.
|
![]() View larger version (38K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 4. Domain structures of cellulose-binding proteins from Fig. 3.
|
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 1. Identification of CBPs located in OM fraction of F. succinogenes S85
|
![]() View larger version (51K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 5. Amino acid sequence of CBP-2 (180-kDa CBP) (A) or ClCBase (Cel10A) (B). Peptides determined by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry are in bold lettering, and peptides sequenced by tandem mass spectrometry or nanoelectrospray mass spectrometry are underlined. Peptides determined by Edman degradation are in bold and italic lettering. The Fibro-slime domain of the 180-kDa CBP is doubly underlined.
|
CBP-4, CBP-7, CBP-9, CBP-10, and CBP-11 were present in the OMs of Ad1 and S85 but absent from Ad4 (Fig. 3 and 4; Table 1). CBP-4 was annotated to be the cellulose-binding protein CelF (previously named EG2), which was previously characterized (32, 33). CBP-7 coded by FSU2397 was annotated as a TPR domain protein with nine consecutive TPRs (27). CBP-9 was annotated as a GH belonging to family 18. CBP-11 was the same protein as protein 11 on the two-dimensional gel (Fig. 6), with high similarity to carbohydrate binding module (CBM) 30.
![]() View larger version (129K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 6. 2-DE of OM proteins from F. succinogenes S85 grown on Avicel cellulose PH105 (A) or glucose (B) and its adhesion-defective mutant strains, Ad1 (C) and Ad4 (D). The proteins identified are indicated by circles and the numbers recorded in Table 2.
|
Major OM proteins with potential roles in cellulose digestion identified by 2-DE. Nineteen proteins were identified in OM from glucose-grown S85 (Fig. 6B). Seventeen and fourteen of them were also identified from AD1 and AD4, respectively (Fig. 6C and D). The most distinct proteins absent from mutants Ad1 and Ad4 corresponded to proteins 2, 19, and 23. Protein 2 was identified as an OM efflux protein which was known to form trimeric channels that allow export of a variety of substrates in gram-negative bacteria (20). Homologs of this protein were found in several CFB groups and green sulfur bacteria. Protein 19 was identified as a type IV pilin, which was also identified as CBP-12. Protein 23 was annotated as an endo-1,4-ß-xylanase with a mass of 65 kDa (FSU0257), but we have shown that FSU0257 is the previously characterized ClCBase (see below) (Fig. 5) (17).
OMs of S85 grown on cellulose subjected to 2-DE contained a greater number of detectable proteins than glucose-grown cells, especially in the 25- to 75-kDa and pI-4-to-7 range, compared to OM of S85 grown on glucose. Of OM proteins identified, 15 were shown to be up-regulated by growth of S85 on cellulose, including ClCBase (Table 2; Fig. 6A and B).
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 2. List of OM proteins of S85 identified by 2-DE and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometrya
|
Proteins 5 and 15 were identified as the same OmpA protein (FSU2078). Protein 5 is the N-terminal 336 amino acids of the 700-amino-acid protein and is presumed to be a proteolytic degradation product. FSU2078 is composed of an N-terminal unknown domain, with eight thrombospondin type 3 repeats (28) and an OmpA-like domain (9) at the C terminus. Four other putative proteins (FSU0180, FSU1003, FSU0255, and FSU3077) in F. succinogenes have high sequence similarity and the same domain organization as this protein.
Protein 11 was identified as a CBP with high similarity (49%) to the N-terminal CBM family 30 of endoglucanase F (Cel51A/FSU0382) of S85.
Six of 15 proteins (proteins 4, 8, 9, 16, 17, and 18) shown to be induced by growth on cellulose were annotated as unknown-function proteins. Proteins 4, 8, 9, and 17 had no homology to proteins from other organisms, although protein 9 (FSU2016) exhibited significant similarity to the P3 protein, which was previously sequenced by Malburg et al. (32). Protein 16 showed weak similarity to a hypothetical protein (YP_677889.1), from Cytophaga hutchinsonii, while protein 18 showed high similarity to hypothetical proteins from delta/epsilon subdivisions of proteobacteria, such as NP_860592.1 in Helicobacter hepaticus (47).
Identification of the ClCBase.
The native ClCBase was purified from the extracellular culture fluid of F. succinogenes S85 grown on cellulose as described by Huang et al. (17), subjected to in-gel trypsin digestion and both MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry to obtain peptide masses and internal amino acid sequences, and identified as Cel10A (FSU0257) by reference to the F. succinogenes genome (www.tigr.org) (Fig. 5B). BLAST searches using the Pfam search server showed that the ClCBase had a modular structure composed of an N-terminal domain which was distantly related to family 4 CBM (amino acid residues 27 to
174) and GH10 family C-terminal catalytic domains (207 to
508).
Regulation of the ClCBase in F. succinogenes S85. Western blotting documented that the ClCBase was localized in the OM as well as both the extracellular culture fluid and the periplasm of F. succinogenes S85 grown on cellulose (Fig. 7). When grown on glucose, this enzyme was mainly located in periplasmic fractions and less in other fractions (Fig. 7). The monospecific anti-rcClCBase antibody did not exhibit cross-reactivity with other proteins in any cell fraction, as described previously for antibodies against the glycosylated enzyme isolated from S85 (18), with the exception of a 39-kDa proteolytic product of ClCBase (Fig. 7).
![]() View larger version (74K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 7. Immunoblot analysis of a fractionated culture of F. succinogenes S85 grown on either cellulose or glucose using monospecific antirecombinant ClCBase antibody. Abbreviations: NS, nonsedimentable extracellular culture fluid; ExOM, extracellular outer membrane; OM, outer membrane; PP, periplasmic fraction. ExOM and PP were prepared as previously described (13). The arrowhead indicates a proteolytic degradation product.
|
|
|
|---|
The proteins CBP-12 and CBP-13 from strain S85 OM that bound to crystalline cellulose were absent from Ad1 and Ad4. Interestingly, CBP-12, which was annotated as a type IV pilin protein, was also found to be missing from Ad1 and Ad4 by the 2-DE analysis (Fig. 6). Pili have been reported to be involved in adhesion of gram-negative bacteria (39). Recently a cellulose adhesion-defective mutant (D5), derived from the gram-positive bacterium Ruminococcus albus, was shown to lack a type IV pilin (termed the GP25). The authors concluded that the type IV pili mediated adhesion of R. albus strain 20 to cellulose (42). Therefore, a role of pili in binding of S85 to cellulose is plausible.
Five proteins, including CBP-4, -7, -9, -10 and -11, of Ad1 OM bound to ASC, whereas they were absent from Ad4, which suggests that they may have specific roles in binding of cells to ASC. CBP-4, which was annotated as CelF (formerly EG2), exhibits a higher activity against ASC than crystalline cellulose (32). In this study, CelF was shown to have a greater affinity for ASC than for crystalline cellulose (Fig. 3), which is consistent with an earlier study by McGavin and Forsberg (34). Therefore, it seems reasonable that CelF may be one of the components involved in adhesion of F. succinogenes S85 to amorphous ASC. CBP-7 was identified as a protein containing nine consecutive TPR repeats at the C terminus. The TPR is a 34-amino-acid repeated motif (10) that frequently forms tandem arrays (27). Individual TPRs adopt a helix-turn-helix conformation, and tandem TPRs fold into concertina-like helical arrays, forming a continuous peptide-binding groove (5). TPRs have been discovered in various organisms ranging from bacteria to the human, but the role of the repeat in bacteria has not been resolved (27). It may be noted that 10 hypothetical proteins containing TPR motifs are present in the S85 genome. CBP-9 was annotated as a GH belonging to family 18, in which chitinases, chitodextrinase, and endo-ß-N-acetylglucosaminidase are mainly categorized (http://afmb.cnrs-mrs.fr/CAZY/), but this protein did not contain a known CBM. CBP-11 was also identified from the 2-DE of the OM proteins (Spot 11 in Table 2), which was up-regulated by growth on cellulose and was absent from Ad4. It contained a CBM belonging to family 30. To the present, only four proteins including the CBM of CelF of S85 (32) were categorized in this CBM family (afmb.cnrs-mrs.fr/CAZY). Arai et al. (1) suggested that the family 30 CBM of C. thermocellum is very important for mediating the binding of the enzyme CelJ to various substrates, including Avicel and amorphous cellulose, and for the correct tertiary structure of the intact protein. In addition, recently the crystal structure of CBM30 was determined by Horiguchi et al. (not published, but the information of the structure is available with the identifier 1WMX in the Protein Data Bank [http://www.rcsb.org]), showing a galactose-binding domain-like fold composed of eight ß-strands.
Previous studies identified four CBPs from the OM fraction of glucose-grown S85 (11) with the molecular masses of 120, 180, 220, and 240 kDa, respectively. The 120-kDa CBP was identified as endoglucanase F, which corresponded to CBP-4 in the present study. The 180-kDa CBP was characterized and thought to have an important role in adhesion. The N-terminal and internal amino acid sequences of the 180-kDa CBP were determined to be encoded by gene FSU2502 by a combination of Edman degradation and mass spectrometry (Fig. 5A) in conjunction with a BLAST search of the genome of F. succinogenes. FSU 2502 is an ORF of 4,650 bp that encodes a protein of 1,549 amino acids, which corresponds to CBP-2. The molecular mass of CBP-1 seems to correspond to the 220- or 240-kDa CBP in Gong et al.'s study (11). This protein possessed an N-terminal catalytic domain belonging to GH family 9; thus, it appeared to be partially involved both in adhesion to cellulose and in the degradation of cellulose.
CBP-1, CBP-2, and CBP-5 were found to exist in both the S85 and mutant strains and to be induced by growth of S85 on cellulose. Therefore, the inability of adhesion-defective mutants Ad4 and Ad1 to adhere to and degrade cellulose suggests that these proteins have limited roles in adhesion of S85 to cellulose and degradation of cellulose. In the case of CBP-2, anti-CBP-2 antibodies blocked binding of S85 to cellulose; however, the antibodies were specific for glycosylation (11). Therefore, it is possible that the CBM is buried in the OM and is unavailable for binding to cellulose unless the membrane is dissociated by detergent. The lack of involvement of binding of CBP-1 and CBP-5 may also be explained by their location in the OM.
To gain further insight into the role of OM proteins in the mechanism of cellulose digestion by F. succinogenes strain S85 and the mutant, OM proteins were separated by 2-DE and identified. The most distinct changes in predominant proteins were the absence from both mutant strains Ad1 and Ad4 of a type IV pilin protein (protein 19; CBP-12) and the Cl-stimulated cellobiosidase (protein 23; Table 2).
The Cl-stimulated cellobiosidase was previously characterized by Huang et al. (17). When up-regulated, a greater proportion of the enzyme was associated with the OM, although it was mainly periplasmic in glucose-grown cells. Since it has a family 4 CBM and has been shown to bind to cellulose (17), it may have a role in adhesion of cells to cellulose; however, it was not among the OM CBPs (Fig. 3). This may be due to its primary location in the periplasm even when S85 is grown on cellulose.
Proteins that were up-regulated in the OM of cellulose-grown S85 cells and down-regulated or absent from glucose-grown cells are candidates for major roles in cellulose digestion. Twenty-five proteins were detected in OMs of cellulose-grown S85, while 19 proteins were found in glucose-grown cells. The genes coding for 16 OM proteins that appeared to be induced by growth of S85 on cellulose were identified in this study, but the roles of the encoded proteins in adhesion to and/or degradation of cellulose remain to be elucidated.
In this proteomic study, 14 proteins were identified as unknown function proteins. This finding is not surprising, since the functions of approximately 50% of ORFs of the S85 genome are unknown and are annotated as hypothetical (or conserved hypothetical) proteins. Nine of the unknown function proteins identified in this study may be unique to S85; in addition, considering that six of those hypothetical proteins were shown to be up-regulated by growth on cellulose, they would appear to be new families of proteins involved in adhesion to cellulose and degradation of cellulose. Learning the functional roles of these proteins in addition to the putative CBPs will substantially further our knowledge of the unique mechanism of cellulose digestion by F. succinogenes.
Published ahead of print on 20 July 2007. ![]()
These authors contributed equally to this study. ![]()
Present address: Section on Cellular Differentiation, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bldg 10, Room 10N325, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892. ![]()
Present address: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 93 Stone Road West, Guelph, Ontario N1G 5C9, Canada. ![]()
¶ Present address: Great Lake Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada. ![]()
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»