Nucleotide sequence of the Yersinia enterocolitica ail gene and characterization of the Ail protein product.
The ability to enter (invade) eucaryotic cells is a property common to many pathogenic bacteria. Yersinia enterocolitica is a facultative intracellular pathogen whose primary site of multiplication is the reticuloendothelial system. In an effort to understand how Y. enterocolitica crosses the intestinal epithelial cell layer, we previously reported the cloning of two loci from Y. enterocolitica that individually conferred an invasive phenotype to the normally noninvasive Escherichia coli HB101. One of these loci, ail, is encoded by a region of DNA that is less than 650 base pairs. We have identified the ail gene product in maxicells as a 17-kilodalton membrane-associated protein. The Ail protein has been purified, and its N-terminal sequence has been determined. The nucleotide sequence of the ail gene revealed a single unique open reading frame of 178 amino acids. Comparison of amino acid sequences deduced from the gene and obtained by analysis of the purified protein identified the first 23 amino acids as a signal sequence. The site(s) at which transcription initiates on the ail gene was identified by primer extension analysis and shown to be identical in E. coli and Y. enterocolitica. Two small open reading frames downstream of ail were found and shown to exhibit considerable identity to the proposed IS3 transposase.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, California 94305.
V L
VL
Miller
J B
JB
Bliska
S
S
Falkow
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001425:Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010641:Phenotype; D010957:Plasmids; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D015183:Restriction Mapping; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D015008:Yersinia enterocolitica / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity
C069712:Ail protein, Yersinia enterocolitica; D001425:Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D012329:RNA, Bacterial