Identification of virulence factors in vibrio vulnificus by comparative transcriptomic analyses between clinical and environmental isolates using cDNA microarray.
We compared the gene expression among four clinical and five environmental V. vulnificus isolates, using a cDNA microarray containing 131 genes possibly associated with pathogenicity, transport, signal transduction, and gene regulations in the pathogen. cDNAs from total RNAs of these isolates were hybridized into the cDNA microarray using the cDNA of the wild-type strain MO6/24-O as a reference. We focused on selecting differentially expressed (DE) genes between clinical and environmental isolates using a modified t-statistic. We could detect two statistically significant DE genes between virulent isolates and less-virulent isolates with a marginal statistical significance (pvalue of 0.008). These were genes putatively encoding pilin and adenlyate cylase. Real time-PCR confirmed that these two selected genes transcribed in significantly higher levels in virulent isolates than in less-virulent isolates. Mutants with lesions in the gene encoding pilin showed significantly higher LD50 values than that of wild type.
Department of Life Science and Interdisciplinary Program of Integrated Biotechnology, Sogang University, Seoul 121-742, Korea.
In Hwang
IH
Kim
Byung-Soo
BS
Kim
Kyung Shin
KS
Lee
Ik-Joong
IJ
Kim
Jee Soo
JS
Son
Kun-Soo
KS
Kim
D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D014735:Vibrio Infections / Q000382:microbiology*; D041261:Vibrio vulnificus / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000378:metabolism; D037521:Virulence Factors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D037521:Virulence Factors