title: Influences of capsule on cell shape and chain formation of wild-type and pcsB mutants of serotype 2 Streptococcus pneumoniae.
abstract: PcsB is a protein of unknown function that plays a critical role in cell division in Streptococcus pneumoniae and other ovococcus species of Streptococcus. We constructed isogenic sets of mutants expressing different amounts of PcsB in laboratory strain R6 and virulent serotype 2 strain D39 to evaluate its cellular roles. Insertion mutagenesis in parent and pcsB(+) merodiploid strains indicated that pcsB is essential in serotype 2 S. pneumoniae. Quantitative Western blotting of wild-type and epitope-tagged PcsB showed that all PcsB was processed into cell-associated and secreted forms of the same molecular mass and that cell-associated PcsB was moderately abundant and present at approximately 4,900 monomers per cell. Controlled expression and complementation experiments indicated that there was a causative relationship between the severity of defects in cell division and decreasing PcsB amount. These experiments also showed that perturbations of expression of the upstream mreCD genes did not contribute to the cell division defects of pcsB mutants and that mreCD could be deleted. Unexpectedly, capsule influenced the cell shape and chain formation phenotypes of the wild-type D39 strain and mutants underexpressing PcsB or deleted for other genes involved in peptidoglycan biosynthesis, such as dacA. Underexpression of PcsB did not result in changes in the amounts or composition of lactoyl-peptides, which were markedly different in the R6 and D39 strains, and there was no correlation between decreased PcsB amount and sensitivity to penicillin. Finally, microarray analyses indicated that underexpression of PcsB may generate a signal that increases expression of the VicRK regulon, which includes pcsB.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Indiana University Bloomington, Jordan Hall, Room 142, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
authors.forename: Skye M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Barendt
authors.forename: Adrian D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Land
authors.forename: Lok-To
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Sham
authors.forename: Wai-Leung
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.forename: Ho-Ching T
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Tsui
authors.forename: Randy J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Arnold
authors.forename: Malcolm E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Winkler
mesh_terms: D016667:Bacterial Capsules / Q000378:metabolism*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D002455:Cell Division; D017353:Gene Deletion; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D023061:Gene Order; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D020043:Genes, Essential; D005816:Genetic Complementation Test; D016254:Mutagenesis, Insertional; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D013296:Streptococcus pneumoniae / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; C062061:MreC protein, Bacteria