Patent Abstract:
in a method of identifying novel virulence associated genetic information about a pathogenic microorganism including information about open reading frames having assigned functions , no assigned functions , showing similarity with hypothetical proteins from other species is provided . an obligate human parasite evolutionary deprived of a substantial portion of its coding capacity is selected and genetic information about it is provided . by comparing the genetic information at least one open reading frame common to the microorganism and the human parasite is identified , which codes for a protein showing similarity with a hypothetical protein from other microorganism species . by introduction of a mutation in the orf a mutated orf is produced . the pathogenicity of the mutated pathogenic organism is assessed and compared with that of the corresponding non - mutated pathogenic organism .

Detailed Description:
bioinformatics . for all the comparisons on protein level blastp was used ( ftp . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov ) [ 39 ]. the cut - off e - value in all of the comparisons was set to 10 − 7 and proteins with a lower e - value were considered as hits . treponema pallidum conserved hypothetical orfs and orfs with unknown function were downloaded at http :// www . tigr . org and compared to the proteome of yersinia pestis retrieved from http :// www . sanger . ac . uk . the protein sequences ( 73 orfs ) from yersinia pestis were then compared to four other bacterial genomes also downloaded from http :// www . tigr . org ; helicobacter pylori 2669 , borrelia burgdorferi and streptococcus pneumoniae tigr4 . the comparison to the unfinished genome sequence of neisseria gonorrhoeae was performed at http :// www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / cgi - bin / entrez / genom table cgi using tblastn . the same cut - off was used in these comparisons . orfs ( 17 ) with homologues in all six genomes were compared to the nr ( non - redundant ) database and to the human proteome downloaded from http :// www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov in order to identify a putative function and to evaluate the level of conservation . genome references in the ncbi database genbank ( benson , d a et al ., nucleics acid res 2002 . 30 ( 1 ): 17 - 20 ) useful in this invention are : nc — 003143 = yersinia pestis co92 ae000520 = treponema pallidum ad000783 = borrelia burgdorferi ae000511 = helicobacter pylori 26695 ae007317 = streptococcus pneumoniae r6 . in regard of neisseria gonorrhoeae , the genome of which has not yet been fully sequenced , useful information was retrieved from ref . 39 , tblastn being used in this instance . bacterial strains , and media . the y . pseudotuberculosis strain ip32953 used in this study was obtained from e . carniel at the pasteur institute in france . this strain was grown on plates containing 10 μg / ml nalidixin in order to select for nalidixin resistant clones . one resistant clone ( ip32953nal ) was used in the all of the experiments and is referred to as wild - type . e . coli strain s17 - 1 □ pir was used for conjugative transfer of the recombinant plasmids for mutagenesis of y . pseudotuberculosis . e . coli strains were grown in lb broth or on lb agar plates . yersinia strains were grown in lb or brain - heart infusion ( bhi ; oxoid ). bhi was supplemented with 5 mm egta and 20 mm mgcl 2 ( bhi − ). for solid media , yersinia selective agar base ( ysa ; difco ) was used . antibiotics were used at the following concentrations ; nalidixin ( 10 μg ml − 1 ), chloramphenicol ( 20 μg ml − 1 ) and carbenicillin / ampicillin ( 100 μg ml − 1 ). preparation of plasmid dna , restriction enzyme digests , ligations and transformations into e . coli were performed essentially as described by [ sambrooks , 1989 # 1319 ]. dna fragments were purified from agarose gels using ultrafree - dna ( amicon , usa ) according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions . mutagenesis strategy : insertion mutants . the insertion mutants were created as described elsewhere [ 40 ] with the exception that the silicide vector pnq705 [ 18 ] was used in this case . mutagenesis strategy : deletion mutants . all of the deletion mutants were constructed in the same way by allelic exchange as described by milton et al [ 21 ]. the fifteen n - terminal and fifteen c - terminal amino acids were not deleted . growth conditions and yop secretion and expression analysis . yop secretion and expression analysis was carried out as described previously by petersson et al . [ 41 ] with the exception of not adding triton x - 100 to the cultivation media . cytotoxicity assay . the cultivation and infection of hela cells has been described in detail previously by rosqvist et al . [ 42 ]. oral infections . bacteria were grown over night in luria broth at 26 degrees with shaking . a 100 ml overnight culture was centrifuged and re - suspended in 50 ml of sterilized tap water . c59 black / 6 female mice were starved for water over night and challenged with the bacteria re - suspended in water at different concentrations ( 5 × 10 9 cfu / ml , 5 × 10 8 cfu / ml for the insertion mutants and also 5 × 10 7 cfu / ml for the deletion mutants ). each cage contained three mice and the mice were allowed to feed on 50 ml of the bacteria for 8 hours , the mice usually consumed approximately 5 ml of the bacterial suspension . in order to calculate ld 50 the concentration of the bacteria fed to the mice were measured by viable count . identification of genes with an unknown function conserved among a selection of human pathogens giving chronic infections . to identify novel hitherto not characterised potential virulence associated genes treponema pallidum [ 8 , 10 ] were chosen for homology comparison to five other human pathogens ( fig1 ). at the time of initiating the study there were 176 conserved hypothetical genes and 35 genes with an unknown function in t . pallidum . these 211 orfs from t . pallidum were first compared to the complete genome of yersinia pestis , since this obligate pathogen seems to be in the process of undergoing adaptation to a new lifecycle that include the human host [ 11 ]. y . pestis is closely related to the strain y . pseudotuberculosis , and it has been proposed that y . pestis is a clone that evolved from y . pseudotuberculosis serotype o : 1 for about 1 , 500 - 20 , 000 years ago [ 12 ]. therefore , the well established yersinia pseudotuberculosis animal model was chosen to evaluate whether the identified genes were associated with virulence . the selection criterion was chosen to identify genes with significant similarity on the protein level ( blastp e - value & lt ; 10 − 7 ). out of the original 211 selected orfs in the t . pallidum genome , 73 remained after comparison with the y . pestis genome . these 73 orfs were thereafter compared to the genomes of the four other selected human pathogens preferentially giving chronic infections ; neisseria gonorrhoeae , helicobacter pylori , borrelia burgdorferi and streptococcus pneumonia [ 9 ] ( fig1 ). this comparison resulted in the identification of 17 conserved orfs , herein named as virulence associated genes ( vags ) 1 - 17 ( tab . 1 ). interestingly , as judged from comparison to the ncbi non - redundant database all vags exhibited homologues sequences in at least 35 other microorganisms , including the two other yersinia species pathogenic for humans yersinia pseudotuberculosis and yersinia enterocolitica , as well as e . coli ( data not shown ), demonstrating that the identified vags are highly conserved among many bacteria . a comparison against the first draft of the human genome showed that 9 of the identified 17 vags also exhibited similarity to human genes ( tab . 1 ). to evaluate the strategy used for selection of potential virulence genes , a number of genes with known activity in vivo were selected and compared to the same set of bacteria described above . a collection of 99 genes with an in vivo activity demonstrated by infection with signature tagged mutants ( stm ) [ 13 - 16 ] or by selected capture of transcribed sequences ( scots ) [ 17 ] were selected . many of these genes are also known to be virulence associated . therefore , for simplicity we here choose to name these genes vir for virulence genes , despite the fact that not all of these genes have been verified to be virulence associated . gene comparison resulted in the identification of 5 genes that were conserved among the selected human pathogens ( tab . 1 ). these five genes were also found to be highly conserved among many organisms , including e . coli , but they did not have any obvious human homologues . targeted mutations of the identified vags and analysis of the resulting virulence phenotypes . to analyse the virulence phenotypes associated with the identified vags , mutants were created in the y . pseudotuberculosis serotype o : 1 strain ip32953 . insertion mutagenesis by a single crossover event using the silicide plasmid pnq705 [ 18 ] were used in the first round of screening for virulence phenotypes of the identified 17 vag genes . with this strategy mutants that grow in a rich medium could be constructed for 14 of the selected vag genes . the remaining three vag genes that could not be mutated are most likely essential for growth in rich media ( tab . 1 ). most of the insertion mutants had the same growth rate as the wild - type strain . one exception was the mutant vage that apart from showing a slightly reduced growth rate also exhibited an elongated filamentous form of the bacteria , especially when incubated at 37 ° c . the 14 insertion mutants were analysed for their ability to express and secrete known yersinia virulence effectors called yops ( yersinia outer proteins ) as well as their ability to induce a cytotoxic response in infected hela cells [ 19 ] ( tab . 1 ). the cytotoxicity of yersinia for hela cells is known to be dependent on the translocation of the yops into the eukaryotic cell by a type iii secretion system ( ttss ) [ 20 ]. all mutants expressed yops , but vagh expressed as well as secreted a reduced amount of yops compared to the wild - type strain . additionally , two mutants ( vagf and vagi ) demonstrated a defect in their ability to secrete yops into the growth media ( tab . 1 ). however , this reduced ability to secrete yops had no or only a minor effect on the ability of the mutants to induce a cytotoxic response in infected hela cells . one exception was vagh , which did result in a much slower cytotoxic response in infected hela cells ( tab . 1 ). thus , 10 of the 14 mutants showed wild - type phenotype with respect to yop secretion and cytotoxicity towards hela cells , whereas the remaining 4 mutants showed a reduced ability to secrete yops and / or a slightly delayed cytotoxicity . similarly , insertion mutations were generated in the five conserved vir - genes that where selected from the collection of genes known to be essential for growth in vivo . all these mutants behaved as the wild - type strain with respect to growth rate , yop secretion and cytotoxicity towards hela cells ( tab . 2 ). the insertion mutants were thereafter screened for virulence in the mouse infection model . the oral route of infection was chosen for the first round of screening since this peripheral route of infection is likely to engage several levels of host defenses . oral infection of the 14 vag mutants showed that 9 ( 63 %) were attenuated in virulence , whereas the remaining 5 mutants were as virulent as the wild - type strain ( table 1 ). insertional mutagenesis of the five vir - genes resulted in three ( 60 %) attenuated mutants , whereas the remaining two mutants were as virulent as the wild - type strain ( table 2 ). the method according to the invention for identifying virulence genes was found to be as efficient as the classical approach . analysis of the dna regions surrounding the identified vag genes revealed that most of these genes are contained within operons . therefore , in frame deletions of the vags were made to verify that the virulence phenotype was due to the identified vag and not due to polar effects on downstream genes . the deletion mutants were constructed by using the sliicide plasmid pdm4 [ 21 ] allowing a double crossover event to occur . deletion mutants could be constructed for eight of the nine virulence associated genes . a non - polar deletion mutant in vagd could not be constructed despite the fact that the in - frame deletion construct could recombinate with homologous sequences both upstream and downstream of the gene with a similar frequency . thus , there seem to be a selective advantage for yersinia to maintain vagd . all the mutants were wild - type phenotypes regarding growth in rich media . however , vagc show similarity to the e . coli ribosomal large subunit pseudouridine synthase d ( rlud ) that is essential for growth of e . coli [ 22 ]. even though it has been shown in e . coli that deletion of some of the pseudouridine synthase genes individually have no effect on exponential growth in rich media [ 23 ], some pseudouridine synthases can confer a growth disadvantage compared to the wild - type strain when grown under competitive conditions [ 24 ]. therefore , the mutant vagc was analysed for its ability to grow under competitive conditions together with the wild - type strain . this showed that the vagc deletion mutant of yersinia grow as well as the wild - type strain also under competitive conditions ( data not shown ). also yop secretion and cytotoxicity towards hela cells were similar to the wild - type strain except for the mutant vagh , that was severely affected in its ability to both secrete and express yops . surprisingly , the vagh mutant was still cytotoxic towards hela cells , but the effect was more than two hours delayed ( tab . 3 ). by using the oral route of infection five of the eight vag - 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