Identification of Critical Amino Acids Conferring Lethality in VopK, a Type III Effector Protein of Vibrio cholerae: Lessons from Yeast Model System

PLoS One. 2015 Oct 21;10(10):e0141038. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141038. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

VopK, a type III effector protein, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Vibrio cholerae strains belonging to diverse serogroups. Ectopic expression of this protein exhibits strong toxicity in yeast model system. In order to map critical residues in VopK, we scanned the primary sequence guided by available data on various toxins and effector proteins. Our in silico analysis of VopK indicated the presence of predicted MCF1-SHE (SHxxxE) serine peptidase domain at the C-terminus region of the protein. Substitution of each of the predicted catalytic triad residues namely Ser314, His353 and Glu357 with alanine resulted in recombinant VopK proteins varying in lethality as evaluated in yeast model system. We observed that replacement of glutamate357 to alanine causes complete loss in toxicity while substitutions of serine314 and histidine353 with alanine exhibited partial loss in toxicity without affecting the stability of variants. In addition, replacement of another conserved serine residue at position 354 (S354) within predicted S314H353E357 did not affect toxicity of VopK. In essence, combined in silico and site directed mutagenesis, we have identified critical amino acids contributing to the lethal activity of VopK in yeast model system.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alanine / metabolism
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Amino Acids / metabolism*
  • Bacterial Proteins / metabolism*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mutagenesis, Site-Directed / methods
  • Recombinant Proteins / metabolism
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Serine / metabolism
  • Vibrio cholerae / metabolism*
  • Yeasts / metabolism*

Substances

  • Amino Acids
  • Bacterial Proteins
  • Recombinant Proteins
  • Serine
  • Alanine

Grants and funding

This work is supported by the grants from the institutional projects OLP-80, supra institutional project (SIP-BSC0210E) and GENESIS-CSIR. Leela Krishna Bankapalli and Rahul Chandra Mishra acknowledge the Department of Biotechnology (DBT India) and Council of Scientific and Industrial (CSIR-India) Research (project UNSEEN-CSIR) respectively for their fellowships. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.