Genome-wide analysis of Chlamydophila pneumoniae gene expression at the late stage of infection.
Chlamydophila pneumoniae, an obligate intracellular eubacterium, changes its form from a vegetative reticulate body into an infectious elementary body during the late stage of its infection cycle. Comprehension of the molecular events in the morphological change is important to understand the switching mechanism between acute and chronic infection, which is deemed to relate to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Herein, we have attempted to screen genes expressed in the late stage with a genome-wide DNA microarray, resulting in nomination of 17 genes as the late-stage genes. Fourteen of the 17 genes and six other genes predicted as late-stage genes were confirmed to be up-regulated in the late stage with a quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. These 20 late-stage genes were classified into two groups by clustering analysis: 'drastically induced' and 'moderately induced' genes. Out of eight drastically induced genes, four contain sigma(28) promoter-like sequences and the other four contain an upstream common sequence. It suggests that besides sigma(28), there are certain up-regulatory mechanisms at the late stage, which may be involved in the chlamydial morphological change and thus pathogenesis.
Miura
Koshiro
K
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Yamaguchi University School of Medicine, 1-1-1 Minami-Kogushi, Ube, Yamaguchi 755-8505, Japan.
Toh
Hidehiro
H
Hirakawa
Hideki
H
Sugii
Manabu
M
Murata
Masayuki
M
Nakai
Kenta
K
Tashiro
Kosuke
K
Kuhara
Satoru
S
Azuma
Yoshinao
Y
Shirai
Mutsunori
M
D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D001483:Base Sequence; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D016993:Chlamydophila pneumoniae / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000382:microbiology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013997:Time Factors
D001426:Bacterial Proteins