A phage protein that inhibits the bacterial ATPase required for type IV pilus assembly

In-Young Chung, Hye-Jeong Jang, Hee-Won Bae, and You-Hee Cho
PNAS August 5, 2014 111 (31) 11503-11508; first published July 21, 2014 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1403537111

  1. Edited* by Frederick M. Ausubel, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, and approved June 23, 2014 (received for review February 25, 2014)

Significance

We have identified a phage-encoded protein that inhibits the bacterial ATPase PilB, which is involved in type IV pilus (TFP) biogenesis and function. This phage protein-mediated PilB dysfunction is regarded as the superinfection-exclusion maneuver of the phage toward TFP-specific phages. This study inspires an antipathogenic target based on the ATPases ubiquitously conserved in the motility and secretion machineries important in bacterial pathogenesis.

Abstract

Type IV pili (TFPs) are required for bacterial twitching motility and for phage infection in the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Here we describe a phage-encoded protein, D3112 protein gp05 (hereafter referred to as Tip, representing twitching inhibitory protein), whose expression is necessary and sufficient to mediate the inhibition of twitching motility. Tip interacts with and blocks the activity of bacterial-encoded PilB, the TFP assembly/extension ATPase, at an internal 40-aa region unique to PilB. Tip expression results in the loss of surface piliation. Based on these observations and the fact that many P. aeruginosa phages require TFPs for infection, Tip-mediated twitching inhibition may represent a generalized strategy for superinfection exclusion. Moreover, because TFPs are required for full virulence, PilB may be an attractive target for the development of novel antiinfectives.

Temperate phages generally lysogenize rather than kill host bacteria, leading to alteration of host traits by the expression of phage-encoded genes (1). Superinfection exclusion is one example of a phage-mediated physiological change, in which a successful lysogenized phage blocks potential competition by another phage. Superinfection exclusion of phages of similar lineage generally involves phage repressors (i.e., homoimmunity) (1, 2). Some temperate phages, however, have developed repressor-independent superinfection exclusion/immunity systems that block phage adsorption or DNA uptake, enabling infected hosts to become resistant to superinfection by phages sharing the same uptake mechanism (1, 3). We previously reported that Pseudomonas aeruginosa temperate phage D3112 blocks infection by a second phage, MP22, but not vice versa. Both D3112 and MP22 require type IV pilus (TFP)-mediated twitching motility for infection (4). This finding is most likely accounted for by the twitching-inhibitory activity unique to D3112 (5). We reasoned that the elucidation of the superinfection exclusion system of phage D3112 may provide insights into the mechanisms of TFP assembly and function. Moreover, because twitching motility is one of the group behaviors critical to biofilm formation and pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa, elucidation of D3112-mediated superinfection exclusion may also be important in the development of new antibacterial therapies. In the present study, we have identified a phage protein for twitching inhibition and its bacterial target.

Results

Expression of D3112 gp05 Is Necessary and Sufficient for Twitching Inhibition.

Zegans et al. previously reported that P. aeruginosa swarming motility is inhibited by phage DMS3 and that the inhibition involves the bacterial Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR)/Cas system present in some P. aeruginosa strains such as PA14 (6). To investigate the potential involvement of the CRISPR/Cas system in twitching inhibition by phage D3112, we first determined whether twitching motility inhibition by D3112 is observed in P. aeruginosa strains lacking the CRISPR/Cas system, including strain PAO1 (6, 7). However, twitching inhibition and subsequent superinfection exclusion were still observed in three independent D3112 lysogens of PAO1 (Fig. S1), indicating that the CRISPR/Cas system does not appear to be required for twitching inhibition and superinfection exclusion.

Reasoning that twitching inhibition by D3112 involves a gene(s) that is unique to D3112, we searched for a D3112-specific gene(s) based on a comparison of whole-genome sequences of D3112 and MP22 (4). As described above, D3112 blocks infection by MP22, but not vice versa, suggesting that MP22 lacks the superinfection-exclusion-related genes of D3112. Two regions of D3112 (R2 and R3) were selected from among the five dissimilar regions between D3112 and MP22 in the early expressed-gene region (Fig. 1A), introduced into PA14 cells, and tested for their ability to confer superinfection exclusion. We found that introduction of the R2 region on a multicopy plasmid (pUCP-R2) was sufficient to exclude infection by unrelated TFP-requiring phages such as MPK7 and PP7 (Fig. 1B and Fig. S2A). There are two coding sequences (gp04 and gp05) in the R2 region. To test which ORF (or both) is involved in phage resistance, we constructed pUCP-gp04 and -gp05. PA14 cells harboring pUCP-gp05 were not susceptible to D3112, DMS3, or MP22, unlike PA14 cells harboring pUCP-gp04, as well as pUCP-gp05ATG→ATT containing the mutation ATG to ATT at the potential initiation codon of gp05 (Fig. 1B). These data suggest that episomal expression of the protein encoded by D3112-gp05 is sufficient to cause superinfection exclusion by blocking the assembly or function of TFPs.

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.

Identification of a phage gene involved in twitching motility inhibition. (A) Gene organization of part of the D3112 early regions. Dissimilar regions between MP22 and D3112 (4) are designated as follows: blue, present in D3112 only; hatched orange, in D3112 representing relatively low similarity between the corresponding genes. (B) Phage lysates of D3112, MP22, and DMS3 lysogens were spotted onto lawns of PA14 cells harboring D3112-specific ORFs cloned in pUCP18. gp05ATT contains a mutation at the potential initiation codon (ATG to ATT), and pUCP18 was used as a vector control. (C) Twitching motility assay using PA14 cells harboring a single-copy gp05 (Tip) integrated at the Tn7 site (attTn7) of the chromosome. PA14 bacteria with mini-Tn7–LAC (mTn7lac) transposed into the PA14 chromosome were used as the control. The tip gene was cloned in the correct [PA14(mTn7lac–Tip)] or the opposite [PA14(mTn7lac–qiT)] orientation into mTn7lac and transposed into the PA14 chromosome. PA14 and its lysogens for MP22 (PA14M) and D3112 (PA14D) were used as the controls.

To determine whether gp05 expression is sufficient for twitching motility inhibition, we created a mini-Tn7–based (mTn7lac) expression system, which is driven by the isopropyl-β-d-thio-galactoside (IPTG)-inducible tac promoter (8). As shown in Fig. 1C, PA14 cells containing mTn7lac-gp05 in the presence of 1 mM IPTG displayed a complete loss of twitching motility, in contrast to uninduced cells, suggesting that twitching inhibition by gp05 directly affects TFP function necessary for the injection of genetic materials by a variety of P. aeruginosa phages (Fig. S1B) (4, 9, 10). These results suggest that D3112 protein gp05 (hereafter referred to as Tip, representing twitching inhibitory protein) is most likely necessary and sufficient for D3112-mediated twitching inhibition.

Tip is a small (136-aa) protein that does not exhibit homology to proteins for which the function is known. It contains an exceptionally large number of serine residues at the N-terminal half (22/68; ∼32%) and potential helices at the C-terminal half, presumably for macromolecular interactions (11). These features suggest a modular structure, with discrete functions for each module. The C-terminal half of Tip displays similarity to 69-aa hypothetical proteins of DMS3 and MP22 (DMS3-3 and MP22–ORF5) (Fig. S2B). Interestingly, the ectopic expression of either MP22– or MP29–ORF5 in a multicopy plasmid could also exclude infection by TFP-requiring phages (Fig. S2A), although the twitching motility of a P. aeruginosa lysogen for either MP22 or MP29 was not affected at all (5). The Far-Western assay using PilB (see below) revealed that the functional expression of MP22– and MP29–ORF5 were undetectable in the MP22 and MP29 lysogens, respectively, whereas Tip was detectable in the D3112 lysogen (Fig. S2C). This result suggests that the functional Tip orthologs were not expressed in the MP22 and MP29 lysogens, presumably due to the differences in the genetic contexts around the ORF5 gene of the phages, which might account for the twitching inhibition observed only in the D3112 lysogen.

Tip Interacts Specifically with PilB at the Internal Region.

To address the mechanism by which Tip affects twitching motility of the host bacterium, we have taken a biochemical approach to identify the host proteins that are copurified with the Tip protein. By using this approach, a ∼60-kDa protein that had been specifically copurified with His-tagged Tip was digested with trypsin and subjected to MALDI-TOF MS analysis. It was identified as PilB, an ATPase protein required for TFP assembly and extension (Fig. S3). To verify the interaction of Tip and PilB, His-tagged Tip and FLAG-tagged PilB were created and introduced into PA14. In parallel, His-tagged Tip and FLAG-tagged PilT were introduced for comparison. Bacteria were grown in the presence or absence of IPTG, and then the cell-free extracts were subjected to Ni2+-affinity chromatography to examine the physical interaction between Tip and PilB as assessed by Western blot. Unlike PilT, PilB was coeluted with Tip in the elution fraction (Fig. 2A), suggesting a specific interaction between Tip and PilB in vivo. The interaction between Tip and PilB was also verified ex vivo by using a Bordetella Cya-based bacterial two-hybrid assay (Fig. 2B) (12). These results suggest that Tip is indeed interacting with PilB, presumably without the involvement of additional factors.

Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.

Interaction between Tip and PilB in P. aeruginosa. (A) The pull-down assay was performed by using the cell-free extracts from cells expressing FLAG-tagged PilB or PilT with [PA14(mTn7lac–His–Tip)] or without [PA14(mTn7lac)] His-tagged Tip. Tip expression was induced by 1 mM IPTG. The pull-down fractions (E) in comparison with the load-on fractions (L) were analyzed by Western blot using anti-FLAG and -His antibodies. (B) Protein–protein interactions were assessed by β-galactosidase activity when coexpressed pKT25 (Left) and pUT18C (Right) derivatives. Empty pKT25 and pUT18C vectors (−) were used as the negative control.

To substantiate the physical interaction between Tip and PilB and to understand the role of PilB domains in TFP assembly and function, the binding domains for Tip and PilB were identified by using truncated PilB variants. PilB is a 567-aa protein belonging to the type II secretion system (T2SS) protein E family (13), which contains bipartite functional regions (Fig. 3A): The N-terminal region spanning amino acid 43 to amino acid 144 (102 aa) is unique to this family, and the C-terminal region from amino acid 239 to amino acid 504 (266 aa) contains an ATP-binding site (326–396) with Walker A (326–333) and Walker B (391–396) motifs. The C-terminal region is also observed in PilT and PilU (Fig. S4). We had expected that Tip might be able to interact with PilB at a region(s) other than the C-terminal region that is generally conserved in ATPase proteins. To localize the binding domain with Tip, several truncated mutants (PilB–NΔ144, –NΔ186, –NΔ226, and –CΔ40) were created and introduced into a pilB deletion mutant expressing the mTn7lac-based His–Tip. Although the mutant proteins were expressed at lower levels than the wild-type protein, none of the mutants could restore the twitching defect of the pilB mutant, implying a critical role of the deleted regions in TFP assembly (Fig. 3 B and C). Based on a bacterial two-hybrid assay using the truncated fusions, however, all of the fusions, except PilB–NΔ226, exhibited interaction with Tip (Fig. 3D and Fig. S5), suggesting that only the 40-aa region present in PilB–NΔ186 and absent in PilB–NΔ226 is critical for the interaction with Tip. The critical involvement of the 40-aa Tip-binding region in twitching motility was verified by creating a total of eight point mutants (G199E, G200A, S201A, L204A, F206L, P208A, Y209A, and I212A), of which two adjacent mutants (P208A and Y209A) were unable to rescue the twitching defect of the pilB mutant and bind to Tip as well (Fig. S6). These results suggest that PilB has a novel internal domain involving P208 and Y209 that is critical for its normal and unique function in TFP assembly and that is also important in binding to the phage twitching inhibitor, Tip.

Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.

Identification of the domain for Tip–PilB interaction. (A) Representation of the functional domains of PilB and its truncated derivatives. Three domains are indicated by boxes. The N-terminal domain conserved in T2SS proteins and the C-terminal NTPase domain (PulE–GspE domain) are shown with Walker boxes (A and B). The Tip-binding domain (TB) is shown. (B) Relative expression level of the truncated mutant proteins. Cell-free extracts from bacteria expressing the full-length (PilB, 63.9 kDa) and the truncated PilB proteins (NΔ144, 47.9 kDa; NΔ186, 43.8 kDa; NΔ226, 39.0 kDa; or CΔ40, 59.4 kDa) were analyzed by Western blot with anti-FLAG antibody. (C) Twitching motilities were assessed for the pilB mutants harboring the wild type and mutant genes for the truncated derivatives (NΔ144, NΔ186, NΔ226, or CΔ40) cloned in pUCP18 (−). PA14 containing pUCP18 was also included. (D) Bacterial two-hybrid assay was performed by using the truncated PilB derivatives (NΔ144, NΔ186, NΔ226, and CΔ40) to map the Tip-binding domain. All of the truncated PilB derivatives are cloned in the pUT18C vector and cotransferred to E. coli DHP1 containing pKT25–Tip.

Tip Antagonizes PilB by Inhibiting the Polar Localization of PilB.

Because any defect in reciprocal ATPases results in the loss of twitching motility (14), it was important to further study whether the Tip–PilB interaction agonizes or antagonizes normal PilB function, based on phage adsorption and surface piliation assays. Because TFP directly binds to various TFP-specific phages, a phage adsorption assay was performed by using Tip-expressing cells as described (4). The ability of MP22 to adsorb to Tip-expressing cells, as well as to the pilA and pilB mutants, was drastically reduced (<25%), in contrast to the percentage of phages bound to wild-type and pilT bacteria, which was >80% under our experimental conditions (Fig. 4A). To determine whether this decrease in adsorption was due to a decrease in surface piliation, bacterial cells expressing FLAG-tagged pilin of PAO1 were scraped from agar plates, and surface appendages including flagella and pili were obtained and analyzed by SDS/PAGE, followed by protein staining and Western blot, respectively. Neither the D3112 lysogen nor the Tip-expressing bacteria displayed surface piliation, nor did the pilB mutant (Fig. 4B). Based on the critical role of the Tip-binding domain of PilB in PilB functioning (Fig. S6), we hypothesized that Tip binding might be able to prevent PilB from polar localization. To this end, we created GFP–PilB fusion proteins as described (15). As shown in Fig. 4 C and D, the polar (unipolar and bipolar) localization of PilB was significantly impaired in mTn7lac-based Tip expression. These results suggest that the phage Tip protein binds to PilB, which results in the delocalization of PilB from the poles.

Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.

Inhibition of PilB function by Tip binding. (A) Phage adsorption assay with a TFP-specific phage. MP22 phages were incubated with PA14 and its mutants (pilB and pilT). The D3112 lysogen (PA14D) and PA14(mTnT7lac–Tip) with (+) or without (−) 1 mM IPTG induction were also included. Unbound phages in the supernatant were measured by plaque assay to calculate the relative adsorption. ***P < 0.001 (Student t test compared with the PA14 control). (B) Surface piliation. Surface proteins were prepared from the indicated strains in A and the MP22 lysogen (PA14M) with an episomal copy of FLAG-tagged pilin of PAO1 and then analyzed by SDS/PAGE followed by staining (for FliC flagellin; Top) or Western blot using anti-FLAG antibody (for PilA pilin; Middle). The cytosolic level of PilA was also assessed by Western blot using the cell-free extracts (Bottom). (C) Delocalization of PilB by Tip. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) N-terminally fused to PilB (GFP–PilB) was introduced into PA14(mTn7lac–Tip). The localization pattern of PilB was assessed by fluorescence microscopy in the absence (Left) and the presence (Right) of 1 mM IPTG to induce Tip expression. (D) Quantitation of Tip-mediated PilB delocalization. Each fraction of PilB localization (unipolar, bipolar, or diffuse) in the independent fields was measured and represented with error bars showing SDs. ***P < 0.001 (Student t test).

Discussion

Twitching motility is a unique form of bacterial surface translocation that occurs by alternate extension and retraction of TFPs, which arises from assembly and disassembly of pilin subunits at the base of the pilus (10, 16). TFPs are able to be retracted through the cell wall, while pilus tips remain firmly adhered to surfaces, acting like grappling hooks for translocation of the cell body. These features enable the TFP appendage and TFP-mediated twitching motility to play a number of roles in P. aeruginosa pathogenesis and biofilm formation, both of which involve structural TFPs (i.e., appendage) for adherence to surfaces as well as functional TFPs (i.e., twitching motility) for spatial differentiation for migration on a surface or dissemination into host tissues (17⇓–19). Moreover, structural TFPs are also required for adsorbing phages, and functional TFPs, especially TFP retraction, is also required for bringing phages in contact with the bacterial cell surface for injection of genetic material (4, 20). Three predicted TFP ATPases—PilB, PilT, and PilU—are supposed to be necessary for the concerted action of twitching motility in P. aeruginosa. PilB is involved in polymerization of pilin subunits to form the pilus, whereas PilT and PilU are involved in depolymerization, suggesting that PilB and PilT play antagonistic roles—with PilB promoting pilin association and fiber formation and PilT contributing to pilus retraction via pilin disassembly—whereas the role of PilU is less clear (10, 14, 15, 21). The phage protein Tip directly interacts with PilB, but not with PilT, at the internal 40-aa regions (187–226) that are not functionally conserved in other proteins, leading to the complete loss of both structural and functional TFPs. Because the conserved His and Walker B boxes in both ATPases are dispensable for their localization in P. aeruginosa (15), the localization of PilB and PilT ATPases is likely directed by other regions unassociated with the ATPase domains, which may include the Tip-interaction region of PilB—assuming that PilB can be sequestered by Tip from the appropriate locale in TFP assembly and function. The Tip-mediated delocalization of PilB most likely may involve the disruption of the PilB hexamers and/or their interactions with other components at the TFP machinery, which include PilC for PilB localization and PilZ and FimX for PilB function (15, 22).

It is intuitively understandable that D3112 lysogeny is beneficial to the phage side of the game by excluding superinfection. Then, what about the host bacteria? Are they only passive players that incur no advantage from lysogenization? This question needs to be carefully addressed; the loss of bacterial motility could enhance the fitness of the bacterium under certain conditions—for example, in chronic infection (23), although motility determinants are generally critical in acute infections caused by P. aeruginosa (18, 24). Furthermore, P. aeruginosa has the proclivity to form biofilms in its habitats, entailing social motilities such as swarming and twitching. DMS3-mediated inhibition of swarming motility and biofilm formation suggests that phage-mediated loss of swarming can be a strategy of the host bacterium to prevent the physical spread of phages by impairing the motility of infected individuals. Likewise, D3112-mediated loss of twitching motility may also be a similar strategy, in that phage-infected bacteria could be locally quarantined via the motility defect. However, because DMS3-mediated swarming inhibition requires host genes (CRISPR/Cas) that are not very prevalent in P. aeruginosa strains (7)—which represents a tradeoff in terms of potential benefits for the host bacteria—D3112-mediated twitching inhibition would seem to be more of a phage strategy, exclusively working for superinfection exclusion.

One of the most meaningful aspects of the present study is the identification, to our knowledge, for the first time of a phage protein affecting host physiological traits that can be directly exploited to attenuate bacterial virulence without significantly inhibiting bacterial growth as observed previously (5). Phage therapy has received renewed attention in the recent era of antibiotic resistance as an alternative and/or supplementary antiinfective modality, which has the additional advantage that it can specifically target host bacterial infections (25, 26). The therapeutic application of phages has been based exclusively on virulent phages that are capable of causing complete cytolysis of host bacteria, but some temperate phages may potentially be considered as a means of attenuating virulence based on previous findings regarding phage-mediated blockage of social motilities (5, 6). The major obstacle to using phages for antibacterial therapy due to immunogenicity upon entry into the circulatory system, strain-level host specificity, and the capability of gene transfer between host bacteria (27, 28) has led to the development of phage proteins such as endolysins for enzymatic antibiotics (i.e., enzybiotics) (25). Recently, phage proteins have been used successfully to validate relevant bacterial targets for novel antibacterials (29). In these regards, more work needs to be performed to explore the potential application of Tip as a new technological platform to design novel biological antipathogenics that can control the group motility of this and related bacterial pathogens.

Methods

Bacterial Strains and Culture Conditions.

The bacterial strains and plasmids used in this study are listed in Table S1. Escherichia coli and P. aeruginosa strains were grown in Luria–Bertani (LB) medium (for broth culture) or on 1.5% (wt/vol) Bacto-agar LB plates at 37 °C. Overnight-grown cells were used as an inoculum (1.6 × 107 cfu/mL) into fresh LB broth and were grown aerobically at 37 °C and then used for the experiments described herein. Antibiotics were used at the following concentrations (μg/mL): ampicillin (50), kanamycin (10), and gentamicin (Gm; 15) for E. coli; and rifampicin (100), carbenicillin (200), and Gm (30) for P. aeruginosa.

Preparation of Phage Lysates.

The phage strains were enriched by a plate lysate method using phage buffer [10 mM MgSO4, 10 mM Tris (pH 7.6), 1 mM EDTA]. After pelleting bacterial cells, the phage particles were precipitated from the phage suspensions with 10% PEG and 1 M NaCl and dissolved in 5 mL of phage buffer. Phage particles were concentrated by ultracentrifugation at 450,000 × g for 4 h and then resuspended in phage buffer.

Phage Infection.

Phage infection was observed by spotting assay (30). Three-microliter samples of serially diluted lysates were spotted on the lawn of P. aeruginosa cells. The plates were grown for 24 h at 37 °C.

Twitching Motility Assays.

For twitching motility, a single colony from overnight culture on a LB agar plate was picked with a toothpick and stab-inoculated through a thin (∼3 mm) twitching plate [i.e., 1.5% (wt/vol) agar LB plate] to the bottom of the Petri dish. After incubation for 48 h at 30 °C, a bacterial hazy zone at the interface between the agar and the surface was observed after visualization using crystal violet.

Western Blot Analyses.

Bacterial cells (20 mL) were harvested at the late-exponential phase and disrupted by sonication to obtain cell-free extracts after centrifugation at 13,000 × g for 10 min. Samples containing 50 μg of total protein were separated by a 15% (vol/vol) SDS/PAGE followed by Western blot analysis using anti-FLAG M2 antibody (Sigma) and/or His-probe H-3 antibody (Santa Cruz) as described (31).

Far-Western Blot Analysis.

Bacterial cells expressing His-tagged PilB (20 mL) were grown for 5 h at 37 °C. The cells were washed twice with binding buffer and disrupted by sonication, resulting in the cell-free extracts that were incubated with Ni–nitrilotriacetic acid (Ni-NTA) resin (Qiagen) and then washed with wash buffer. His-tagged PilB and its interacting protein(s) were recovered by elution buffer, resulting in the elution fractions that were separated by SDS/PAGE and then transferred as in Western blotting. After blocking, the blot was incubated first with the partially purified FLAG-tagged PilB proteins and then subjected to Western blot analysis using anti-FLAG and -His antibodies.

Pull-Down Assay and Identification of Tip-Binding Proteins.

Tip protein was tagged with His epitope and cloned into pUC18T-mini-Tn7T-LAC (mTn7lac-His-Tip). PA14 cells containing His-tagged Tip were grown to early logarithmic growth phase (OD600 = 0.3) and then treated with 1 mM IPTG for an additional 4 h at 37 °C. The culture aliquots were harvested, and the cell pellets were washed twice with binding buffer [50 mM NaH2PO4 (pH 8.0) and 500 mM NaCl] and then disrupted by sonication. After centrifugation, the supernatants were incubated with Ni-NTA resin (Qiagen) and washed with wash buffer [50 mM NaH2PO4 (pH 8.0), 500 mM NaCl, and 10 mM imidazole]. His-tagged Tip and the interacting proteins were recovered by elution buffer [50 mM NaH2PO4 (pH 8.0), 500 mM NaCl, and 250 mM imidazole]. The elution fractions were analyzed by SDS/PAGE, followed by Western blot analysis for the pull-down assay. For identification of Tip-binding proteins, the gel was stained with Coomassie Brilliant Blue R. The stained bands were cut and washed three times by incubating with 40% (vol/vol) acetonitrile and 200 mM ammonium bicarbonate for 15 min at 37 °C and then allowed to air dry. The gel pieces were digested with trypsin in 9% (vol/vol) acetonitrile and 40 mM ammonium bicarbonate. The tryptic peptides were analyzed by MALDI-TOF MS using a Voyager-DETM STR Biospectrometry Workstation (Applied Biosystems) as described (32).

Bacterial Two-Hybrid Assay.

For protein–protein interaction studies, a bacterial adenylate cyclase two-hybrid system was used (12). The bait–prey vectors pKT25 and pUT18C were used. In this study, we created pKT25-Tip and pUT18C-pilB and its derivatives. The recombinant plasmids were cotransformed into the E. coli DHP1 (cya) reporter strain by electroporation. Electroporation was carried out with a Bio-Rad Gene Pulser apparatus at a capacitance of 25 μF, a resistance of 200 Ω, and a voltage of 2.5 kV. The transformants were grown on LB plates containing 40 μg/mL X-Gal for 2 d at 30 °C.

Phage Adsorption Assay.

Phage adsorption was performed as described (4). Late-exponential-phase cells (∼107 cfu) were harvested by centrifugation and resuspended in phage buffer containing ∼103 pfu of MP22. After incubation for 20 min at 37 °C, bacterial cells were pelleted, and the supernatants were subjected to filtration. The pfu of the supernatants was determined by plaque assay. The percentages of pfu reduction relative to the pfu determined from the mixture without bacterial cells were calculated. Statistical significance is indicated, based on a P value of <0.001 by the Student's t test.

Surface Protein Assay.

The coding region of the PAO1 pilA gene with a C-terminal FLAG tag was cloned into pUCP18, resulting in pUCP18-pilAO1, which was introduced into PA14 cells. Surface proteins (mainly flagella and pili) were isolated by shearing as described with modification (33). Briefly, bacterial cells were streaked on LB agar plates for 24 h at 37 °C. The grown cells were gently scraped from the agar surface by using a scraper and resuspended in 1 mL of PBS (pH 7.4) per plate. After vigorous vortexing for 5 min, the suspensions were harvested for 5 min at 15,000 × g. The pellets were used as the cytosolic fraction, and the supernatant was centrifugated for 30 min at 15,000 × g and then transferred to a new tube. A one-tenth volume each of 5 M NaCl and 30% (wt/vol) PEG was added to the supernatant to precipitate the sheared proteins, and the samples were pelleted for 30 min at 15,000 × g at 4 °C after incubation at 4 °C for 24 h. The pellets were resuspended in PBS and eletrophoresed on a 15% (wt/vol) SDS/PAGE gel, followed by Coomassie Brilliant Blue R staining (for flagellin) or by Western blot analysis (for pilin).

Fluorescence Microscopy.

The FLAG-tagged pilB gene was additionally tagged with GFP at the N terminus with a linker (GLGSGGGSGGT) and then cloned into pUCP18 as described by Chiang et al. (15), which was introduced into the wild-type PA14 to monitor the localization of PilB in the functional PilB background. The bacterial cells were grown in LB broth to an OD600 of 3.0, harvested, and washed with PBS. The localization was monitored as the fluorescence was assessed by a Deltavision Restoration Microscope System (Applied Precision).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Won-Ki Huh for fluorescence microscopy. This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea Grant (NRF-2014R1A2A2A01003230).

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: youhee{at}cha.ac.kr.

  • Author contributions: Y.-H.C. designed research; I.-Y.C. performed research; H.-J.J. and H.-W.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; I.-Y.C. and Y.-H.C. analyzed data; and I.-Y.C. and Y.-H.C. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • ↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1403537111/-/DCSupplemental.

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A phage protein inhibiting TFP assembly
In-Young Chung, Hye-Jeong Jang, Hee-Won Bae, You-Hee Cho
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Aug 2014, 111 (31) 11503-11508; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1403537111
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