Authors
Sodeinde, Olanrewaju A.Subrahmanyam, Y. V. B. K.
Stark, Kimbery
Quan, Thomas
Bao, Youdi
Goguen, Jon D.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Molecular Genetics and MicrobiologyGraduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
1992-11-06Keywords
Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; *Bacterial Proteins; Colony Count, Microbial; Escherichia coli; Injections, Intravenous; Kinetics; Liver; Mice; Molecular Sequence Data; Mutation; Plague; Plasmids; Plasmin; Plasminogen Activators; Recombinant Proteins; Spleen; Tissue Plasminogen Activator; Urinary Plasminogen Activator; Yersinia pestisLife Sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A 9.5-kilobase plasmid of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague, is required for high virulence when mice are inoculated with the bacterium by subcutaneous injection. Inactivation of the plasmid gene pla, which encodes a surface protease, increased the median lethal dose of the bacteria for mice by a millionfold. Moreover, cloned pla was sufficient to restore segregants lacking the entire pla-bearing plasmid to full virulence. Both pla+ strains injected subcutaneously and pla- mutants injected intravenously reached high titers in liver and spleen of infected mice, whereas pla- mutants injected subcutaneously failed to do so even though they establish a sustained local infection at the injection site. More inflammatory cells accumulated in lesions caused by the pla- mutants than in lesions produced by the pla+ parent. The Pla protease was shown to be a plasminogen activator with unusual kinetic properties. It can also cleave complement C3 at a specific site.Source
Science. 1992 Nov 6;258(5084):1004-7.
DOI
10.1126/science.1439793Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/32574PubMed ID
1439793Related Resources
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1126/science.1439793