Naturally occurring isolates of Neisseria gonorrhoea, which display anomalous serovar properties, express PIA/PIB hybrid porins, deletions in PIB or novel PIA molecules |
| |
Authors: | Susan J Cooke Keith Jolley Catherine A Ison Hugh Young John E Heckels |
| |
Institution: | Department of Microbiology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Shizuoka, Shizuoka, Shizuoka 422, Japan;Department of Microbiology, Gifu University School of Medicine, 40 Tsukasa-machi, Gifu, Gifu 500, Japan |
| |
Abstract: | The por gene of Neisseria gonorrhoeae encodes the Protein I porin responsible for serovar specificity. In this study the por genes have been sequenced from clinical isolates which exhibited anomalous serovar reactivity. One group of `intermediate' strains differed significantly from both Protein IA and IB strains, were more closely related to IA but appeared to represent a distinct class of Protein I. Another strain was closely related to Protein IB of serovar IB-6 but contained a deletion of six amino acids in surface exposed loop 6 which removed epitopes recognised by IB specific monoclonal antibodies. The third group of strains, which reacted with both IA and IB specific monoclonal antibodies, expressed hybrid Protein I molecules containing both IA and IB epitopes. These strains appeared to originate from a double crossover between Proteins IA and IB with the amino and carboxy terminal residues homologous to IB while the surface exposed loop 6 demonstrated close homology to IA. This is the first demonstration of naturally occurring gonococci expressing a hybrid Protein IA/IB. |
| |
Keywords: | Salmonella typhi Vi-antigen Invasion Type 1 fimbria Outer membrane protein |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|