Mutants in the lipopolysaccharide of Brucella ovis are attenuated and protect against B. ovis infection in mice

Date

2014

Authors

Soler Lloréns, Pedro
Iriarte, Maite
Conde Álvarez, Raquel
Zúñiga Ripa, Amaia
Zygmunt, Michel
Vizcaíno, Nieves
Cloeckaert, Axel

Director

Publisher

BioMed Central
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa

Project identifier

  • MICINN//AGL2011-30453-C04-03/ES/ recolecta
  • MICINN//AGL2008-04514-C03-01/ES/ recolecta
Impacto
No disponible en Scopus

Abstract

Brucella spp. are Gram-negative bacteria that behave as facultative intracellular parasites of a variety of mammals. This genus includes smooth (S) and rough (R) species that carry S and R lipopolysaccharides (LPS), respectively. S-LPS is a virulence factor, and mutants affected in the S-LPS O-polysaccharide (R mutants), core oligosaccharide or both show attenuation. However, B. ovis is naturally R and is virulent in sheep. We studied the role of B. ovis LPS in virulence by mutating the orthologues of wadA, wadB and wadC, three genes known to encode LPS core glycosyltransferases in S brucellae. When mapped with antibodies to outer membrane proteins (Omps) and R-LPS, wadB and wadC mutants displayed defects in LPS structure and outer membrane topology but inactivation of wadA had little or no effect. Consistent with these observations, the wadB and wadC but not the wadA mutants were attenuated in mice. When tested as vaccines, the wadB and wadC mutants protected mice against B. ovis challenge. The results demonstrate that the LPS core is a structure essential for survival in vivo not only of S brucellae but also of a naturally R Brucella pathogenic species, and they confirm our previous hypothesis that the Brucella LPS core is a target for vaccine development. Since vaccine B. melitensis Rev 1 is S and thus interferes in serological testing for S brucellae, wadB mutant represents a candidate vaccine to be evaluated against B. ovis infection of sheep suitable for areas free of B. melitensis.

Description

Incluye 1 fichero de datos

Keywords

Linked immunosorbent assay, Outer membrane protein, Monoclonal-antibodies, O-polysaccharide, Rough lipopolysaccharide, OMP25/OMP31 family, DNA polymorphism, Host-range, Melitensis, Vaccines

Department

IdAB. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología / Agrobioteknologiako Institutua

Faculty/School

Degree

Doctorate program

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© 2014 Soler-Lloréns et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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