Cell specificity of Helicobacter pylori cytotoxin is determined by a short region in the polymorphic midregion.
There are two alleles of the vacuolating cytotoxin gene from Helicobacter pylori, which code for toxins with different cell specificities. By analyzing the phenotypes of natural and artificial chimeras between the two forms of the protein, we have delimited a short stretch of amino acids which determine the cell specificity.
Ji
X
X
Department of Molecular Biology, IRIS, Chiron Vaccines, Siena 53100, Italy.
Fernandez
T
T
Burroni
D
D
Pagliaccia
C
C
Atherton
J C
JC
Reyrat
J M
JM
Rappuoli
R
R
Telford
J L
JL
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000633:toxicity*; D001427:Bacterial Toxins / Q000235:genetics / Q000633:toxicity*; D003603:Cytotoxins / Q000235:genetics / Q000633:toxicity*; D004847:Epithelial Cells; D006367:HeLa Cells; D016480:Helicobacter pylori / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D006801:Humans; D007668:Kidney / Q000166:cytology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011817:Rabbits; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D014617:Vacuoles
D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D001427:Bacterial Toxins; D003603:Cytotoxins; C074689:VacA protein, Helicobacter pylori