Galactosylated wall-teichoic acid, but not lipoteichoic acid, retains InlB on the surface of serovar 4b Listeria monocytogenes
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive, intracellular pathogen harboring the surface-associated virulence factor InlB, which enables entry into certain host cells. Structurally diverse wall-teichoic acids (WTAs), which can also be differentially glycosylated, determine the antigenic basis of the various Listeria serovars. WTAs have many physiological functions; they can serve as receptors for bacteriophages, and provide a substrate for binding of surface proteins such as InlB. In contrast, the membrane-anchored lipoteichoic acids (LTAs) do not show significant variation and do not contribute to serovar determination. It was previously demonstrated that surface-associated InlB non-covalently adheres to both WTA and LTA, mediating its retention on the cell wall. Here, we demonstrate that in a highly virulent serovar 4b strain, two genes gtlB and gttB are responsible for galactosylation of LTA and WTA, respectively. We evaluated the InlB surface retention in mutants lacking each of these two genes, and found that only galactosylated WTA is required for InlB surface presentation and function, cellular invasiveness, and phage adsorption, while galactosylated LTA plays no role thereof. Our findings demonstrate that a simple pathogen-defining serovar antigen, that mediates bacteriophage susceptibility, is necessary and sufficient to sustain the function of an important virulence factor.
Date Issued
2020-03
Date Acceptance
2020-01-09
Citation
Molecular Microbiology, 2020, 113 (3), pp.638-649
ISSN
0950-382X
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
638
End Page
649
Journal / Book Title
Molecular Microbiology
Volume
113
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Authors. Molecular Microbiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mmi.14455
Grant Number
100289/Z/12/Z
210671/Z/18/Z
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Microbiology
bacteriophages
cell wall
galactose
glycosylation
Listeria monocytogenes
teichoic acids
CELL-WALL
D-ALANINE
VIRULENCE
IDENTIFICATION
RECEPTOR
PROTEIN
COLONIZATION
RESISTANCE
MORPHOLOGY
EXPRESSION
Listeria monocytogenes
bacteriophages
cell wall
galactose
glycosylation
teichoic acids
06 Biological Sciences
07 Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences
11 Medical and Health Sciences
Microbiology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-03-17