Impaired synthesis and secretion of SopA inSalmonella Typhimurium dam mutants

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RESEARCH LETTER

Impaired synthesis and secretion of SopA in Salmonella
Typhimurium dam mutants
Mónica N. Giacomodonato1, Sebastián H. Sarnacki1, Mariángeles Noto Llana1, Alejandra S. Garcı́a
Cattaneo1, Sergio Uzzau2, Salvatore Rubino2 & Marı́a Cristina Cerquetti1
1
 CEFYBO-CONICET, Departamento de Microbiologı́a, Parasitologı́a e Inmunologı́a, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires,
Argentina; and 2Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Università di Sassari, Sassari, Italia

Correspondence: Mónica N.                       Abstract
Giacomodonato, CEFYBO-CONICET,
Departamento de Microbiologı́a,
                                                 DNA adenine methylation regulates virulence gene expression in certain bacteria,
Parasitologı́a e Inmunologı́a, Facultad de       including Salmonella Typhimurium. The aim of this study was to investigate the
Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires,           involvement of DNA adenine methylase (Dam) methylation in the expression and
Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tel.: 154 11 5950       secretion of the SPI-1 effector protein SopA. For this purpose, SopA–FLAG-tagged
9500; fax: 154 11 4964 2554; e-mail:             wild-type and dam strains of Salmonella Typhimurium were constructed. The
monicagiaco@gmail.com                            expression and secretion of SopA were determined in bacterial culture and in
                                                 intracellular bacteria recovered from infected HEp-2 epithelial cells. Bacterial
Received 25 September 2008; accepted 4
                                                 culture supernatants and pellets were used to investigate secreted proteins and
December 2008.
First published online 14 January 2009.
                                                 cell-associated proteins, respectively. Western blot and quantitative reverse tran-
                                                 scriptase PCR analysis showed that the dam mutant expresses lower levels of SopA
DOI:10.1111/j.1574-6968.2008.01473.x             than the wild-type strain. Interestingly, the strain lacking Dam synthesizes SopA
                                                 under nonpermissive conditions (28 1C). In addition, SopA secretion was drasti-
Editor: Reggie Lo                                cally impaired in the dam mutant. In vivo experiments showed that the intracel-
                                                 lular Salmonella dam mutant synthesizes SopA although in lower amounts than
Keywords                                         the wild-type strain. Taken together, our results suggest that Dam methylation
Salmonella Typhimurium; SopA; DNA adenine        modulates the expression and secretion of SopA in Salmonella Typhimurium.
methylase (Dam).

                                                                           number of genes that are normally only produced in vivo
Introduction                                                               during the initiation and progression of bacterial infection
Alteration of DNA adenine methylase (Dam) activity has                     (Heithoff et al., 1999, 2001; Mahan et al., 2000); addition-
been shown to attenuate the virulence of several pathogens                 ally, both bacteria-associated and secreted proteins are
and to confer protective immune responses in vaccinated                    affected by the loss of Dam regulation (Garcı́a del Portillo
animals (Wion & Casadesús, 2006). The molecular basis of                  et al., 1999; Heithoff et al., 2001; Pucciarelli et al., 2002). A
virulence attenuation and protection conferred in dam                      recent report by Balbontı́n et al. (2006) provided evidence
mutant strains appears to involve ectopic gene expression                  that Dam methylation regulates the invasion genes of the
and the resultant elaboration of an expanded repertoire of                 pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1); they proposed a correlation
antigens. Additionally, the low-grade persistence of dam                   between specific alterations of gene expression and certain
mutant vaccines in appropriate lymphoid tissues (e.g.                      virulence defects of Salmonella dam mutants. The need for
Peyer’s patches) in Salmonella spp. (Garcı́a del Portillo                  Dam methylation to activate the expression of SPI-1 genes
et al., 1999; Heithoff et al., 2001) and in Yersinia (Julio                seems to provide a straightforward explanation for the
et al., 2001) may provide a stable source of antigens in                   reduced secretion of SPI-1 effectors such as SipA, SipB and
sufficient quantity and duration for the transition toward                 SipC reported earlier (Garcı́a del Portillo et al., 1999).
the development of potent adaptive immune responses                        Certain effector proteins, such as SopA, whose secretion is
(Dueger et al., 2001; Heusipp et al., 2007). This suggestion               mediated by the SPI-1 type III secretion system (TTSS-1),
is supported by work with Salmonella wherein loss of the                   are encoded by genes that are located outside SPI-1. SopA
Dam function results in a number of changes in the bacterial               participates in triggering inflammation through its E3 ligase
physiology. Dam mutants appear to express in vitro a                       activity (Zhang et al., 2006) and facilitates the bacterial

FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77                                                             
                                                                                                 c 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies
                                                                                                  Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
72                                                                                                        M.N. Giacomodonato et al.

escape out of the Salmonella-containing vacuoles into the          pellets were resuspended in 100 mL of H2O and immediately
cytosol (Zhang et al., 2005). In this work, we found that          mixed with 100 mL of Laemmli lysis buffer (Laemmli, 1970).
Dam methylation regulates the expression and secretion of          Suspensions were incubated at 100 1C for 5–10 min. For the
SopA effector protein. These findings would contribute             isolation of proteins released into the culture supernatants
towards the understanding of attenuation of bacteria lacking       (secreted proteins), cells were pelleted by centrifugation and
the Dam protein, proposed as live vaccines.                        2-mL supernatant was collected from each sample. The
                                                                   supernatants were then filtered (0.45-mm pore size), and
Materials and methods                                              the proteins were precipitated with 25% TCA and sedimen-
                                                                   ted by high-speed centrifugation (14 000 g for 30 min). The
Bacterial strains                                                  pellet was washed in cold acetone and resuspended in
                                                                   phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and Laemmli buffer. Four
Salmonella Typhimurium American Type Culture Collec-
                                                                   independent extractions for each sample were added to-
tion (ATCC) 14028 and derived strains tagged with the 8-aa
                                                                   gether to minimize differences in protein recovery from
FLAG epitope tag peptide were used in this work. Strain
                                                                   sample to sample. The proteins were then boiled for
SSM2795 (sopA::3  FLAG) was obtained using the method
                                                                   5–10 min, and an aliquot of each sample was separated by
described by Uzzau et al. (2001). 3  FLAG epitope tails
                                                                   sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis
were added to the ends of the sopA gene. The 3  FLAG
                                                                   (10% gel) (Raffatellu et al., 2005).
epitope is a sequence of three tandem FLAG epitopes
(22 aa). A pair of primers was designed to amplify a
3  FLAG and kanR coding sequence using plasmid pSUB11             Immunodetection analysis
(Uzzau et al., 2001). The 3 0 ends of these oligonucleotides       3  FLAG fusion SopA was immunodetected using mouse
were complementary to the first 20 nt of the pSUB11                anti-FLAG M2-peroxidase mAbs (Sigma). SopA expression
3  FLAG coding region (GACTACAAAGACCATGACGG,                      and secretion were normalized to 106 CFU and shown as
forward primers) and to the 20 nt of the pSUB11 priming            arbitrary units. Detection was performed by chemilumines-
site 2 (CATATGAATATCCTCCTTAG, reverse primers). The                cence (Luminol, Santa Cruz Biotechnology). Blots were
5 0 -ends of the oligonucleotides were designed to be homo-        scanned, and the intensity of the signals was determined
logous to the last 40 nt of each tagged gene, not including        using the public domain NIH IMAGE program (http://rsb.in
the stop codon (forward primers), and to the 40 nt immedi-         fo.nih.gov/nih-image/).
ately downstream of the gene stop codon (reverse primers).
The high-frequency generalized transducing bacteriophage           Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR)
P22HT was used for the transduction. The Ddam-230 zge-
6313::Tn10dCmR allele was transduced from the Salmonella           Total bacterial RNA was extracted using Trizol reagent (Life
Typhimurium SV4712 strain (kindly provided by Dr Casa-             Technologies Inc., Grand Island, NY). Total RNA (1 mg per
desús) into the tagged strains SSM2795, resulting in a dam        sample) was reverse-transcribed using Transcriptor Reverse
strain called STD2795 (sopA::3  FLAG Ddam-230 zge-                Transcriptase (Roche, Basel, Switzerland) according to the
6313::Tn10dCmR). Complementation assays were per-                  manufacturer’s protocol. qRT-PCR was performed using the
formed using plasmid pIZ833 – a pMM40 derivative carry-            SYBR Green PCR kit (PE Applied Biosystems, Foster City,
ing the dam gene of Salmonella Typhimurium strain SL1344           CA) using an Applied Biosystems 7700 sequence detector.
under the control of a tac promoter (A.I. Prieto, unpub-           Measured mRNA levels were normalized to the mRNA
lished data).                                                      levels of the 16S rRNA gene. The primer sequences
                                                                   were SopA forward, TCCACCGTGAAGTTGATTGA, and
Preparation of secreted proteins                                   reverse, GCACTGAGGATGTGCTGGTA, and 16S forward,
                                                                   TGTAGCGGTGAAATGCGTAG, and reverse, CAAGGGCA-
Bacterial strains were grown under conditions that either          CAACCTCCAAG. Cycling conditions were 95 1C for
induce or not the expression of SPI-1 genes, as described by       10 min, followed by 45 cycles of 95 1C for 10 s, 55 1C for
Miki et al. (2004). Bacterial culture supernatants and pellets     10 s and 72 1C for 15 s and one cycle of 40 1C for 30 s.
were obtained to investigate secreted proteins and cell-
associated proteins, respectively (Pucciarelli et al., 2002).
                                                                   Ileal loops
Bacteria were grown overnight, in Luria–Bertani (LB) broth
containing 0.3 M NaCl, without aeration, at 37 1C (SPI-1-          Six- to eight-week-old BALB/c mice were purchased from
inducing conditions) or at 28 1C (noninducing conditions).         the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de
For the isolation of cell-associated proteins, bacterial strains   Buenos Aires, and kept in our animal house throughout the
carrying the epitope-tagged gene were grown in 1.5-mL              experiments. All experiments were performed in accordance
cultures to the stationary phase and centrifuged. Bacterial        with the guidelines of the School of Medicine Animal Care


c 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies                                             FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
SopA in Salmonella dam mutants                                                                                                                        73

and Use Committee. The model described by Jones et al.            Table 1. Invasion and proliferation of tagged strains
(1994) was used to study the invasion capacity of ATCC                                                Control         wtw         dam          dam/pIZ
14028, SSM2795, STD2795 and STD2795/pIZ833 strains of                                       z
                                                                  Ileal loop invasion (%)             100               97         45‰          46‰
Salmonella Typhimurium. Mice were infected intraloop              HEp-2 invasion (%)z                 100              103         40‰          ND
with 107 CFU of each bacterial strain and sacrificed              HEp-2 intracellular                 100               96         60‰          100
60 min later. Ileal loops were aseptically removed and               proliferation (%)z
incubated for 60 min in gentamicin before homogenizing.           Wild-type untagged strain, Salmonella Typhimurium ATCC 14028.
Intracellular bacteria were recovered by plating homogenate       w
                                                                    Wild-type tagged strain, Salmonella Typhimurium SSM2795.
dilutions.                                                        ‰
                                                                    P o 0.05 with respect to the wild-type tagged strain of Salmonella
                                                                  Typhimurium SSM2795.
                                                                  z
Bacterial infection of eukaryotic cells                            Expressed as percentage with respect to control strain Salmonella
                                                                  Typhimurium ATCC 14028.
Human laryngeal epithelial (HEp-2) cells (ATCC, CCL-23)           Ileal loop invasion was assessed 60 min after infection in BALB/c mice.
were maintained in DMEM containing 10% fetal bovine               HEp-2 cells were used to investigate Salmonella Typhimurium invasion
serum. Confluent monolayers were inoculated with bacteria         and proliferation at 20 min and 24 h, respectively.
grown standing overnight in LB broth, at a multiplicity of        ND, not determined.
infection of 10 : 1. Infected monolayers were then incubated
for 20 min at 37 1C in 5% CO2, washed twice with PBS and
then incubated in fresh tissue culture medium containing
                                                                  both methylated and unmethylated DNA, but only DNA
100 mg mL1 gentamicin for 30 min to remove extracellular
                                                                  from the dam mutant was cut with MboI, which requires
bacteria. Finally, monolayers were washed three times with
                                                                  unmethylated adenine residues; wild-type DNA was cleaved
PBS and lysed with 1% Triton X-100 in PBS to release
                                                                  with DpnI, which digests methylated adenine residues. The
intracellular bacteria. An aliquot of this suspension was used
                                                                  digestion pattern was restored to that of the wild type in the
to determine the number of intracellular bacteria by plating
                                                                  dam mutant complemented with pIZ833 plasmid, indicat-
serial dilutions onto LB agar plates. Released bacteria were
                                                                  ing that the differences observed between dam and wild-type
then prepared for immunoblotting analysis as described
                                                                  methylation patterns are due to lack of the Dam protein
above. In selected experiments, intracellular CFU were
                                                                  (data not shown). In line with previous studies on Salmo-
counted both 20 min and 24 h after infection to determine
                                                                  nella dam mutants (Garcı́a del Portillo et al., 1999), we
the replication rate of intracellular Salmonella. Invasion
                                                                  found that tagged strain STD2795 (sopA::3  FLAG Ddam-
rates of nonphagocytic cells were determined as the ratio of
                                                                  230 zge-6313::Tn10dCmR) shows defects in invasion within
viable intracellular bacteria recovered shortly after infection
                                                                  nonphagocytic cells (Table 1). Invasiveness was investigated
(20 min) vs. viable bacteria added to infect the eukaryotic
                                                                  using both HEp-2 cultured cells and the murine ileal loop;
cells.
                                                                  the results are presented in Table 1. Salmonella dam strain
                                                                  was partially impaired for invading nonphagocytic cells
Results and discussion                                            (45% of wild-type values in cultured cell and 40% of wild-
                                                                  type values in murine ileal mucosa). A significant defect in
Epitope tagging does not modify wild-type or
                                                                  the proliferation of the dam strain within HEp-2 cells was
dam phenotypes                                                    also detected (60% of wild-type values). The DNA methyla-
In order to investigate whether tagging of SopA with the          tion pattern and proliferation capacity of the mutant were
FLAG epitope affects virulence properties, we performed           restored by introducing the dam gene cloned in plasmid
experiments using tagged and untagged wild-type Salmo-            pIZ833. The invasion defect of the dam mutant, however,
nella Typhimurium. No significant differences in invasive-        could not be fully restored by complementation (Table 1).
ness or intracellular proliferation were observed in any of the   Failure in restoring certain virulence traits after comple-
wild-type strains studied (Table 1). These findings are in        mentation of dam mutants has been reported earlier
agreement with an earlier work performed in a murine              (Garcı́a del Portillo et al., 1999; Heithoff et al., 2001;
model of infection (Giacomodonato et al., 2007). It has           Balbontı́n et al., 2006) and could be explained by the fact
been well documented that lack of the Dam protein affects         that overproduction of Dam methylase reproduces
DNA methylation status, bacterial invasion and intracellular      certain phenotypes of mutant strains lacking the Dam
proliferation capacities (Garcı́a del Portillo et al., 1999;      protein (Torreblanca & Casadesus, 1996; Løbner-Olesen
Heithoff et al., 2001). Our results show that tagging of the      et al., 2005). Altogether, our results show that epitope
SPI-1 gene sopA does not modify the attenuated phenotype          tagging does not affect the dam phenotype of Salmonella
of the Salmonella Typhimurium dam mutant. DNA from all            mutants; consequently, tagged strains were used in this
the strains tested was cleaved with Sau3AI, which recognizes      work.

FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77                                                            
                                                                                                c2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies
                                                                                                Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
74                                                                                                                                             M.N. Giacomodonato et al.

                               (a)            SPI-1-inducing conditions (37 °C)                      SPI-1-non-inducing conditions (28 °C)

                                                 wt                           dam       dam/pIZ          wt          dam        dam/pIZ
                               SopA

                               (b)                                           250    *

                                                      SopA expression (AU)
                                                                             200

                                                                             150                                 *          37 °C

                                                                                                  § #                       28 °C
                                                                             100

                                                                             50

                                                                              0
                                                                                        wt        dam          dam/pIZ

Fig. 1. Analysis of SopA expression in vitro by Western blot. Salmonella Typhimurium-tagged strains SSM2795 (wt), STD2795 (dam) and STD2795/
pIZ833 (dam/pIZ) were grown at 37 1C (SPI-1-inducing conditions) or at 28 1C (noninducing conditions). (a) Bacterial pellets were processed and used to
investigate cell-associated proteins. Samples were subjected to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and tagged proteins were
detected by anti-FLAG antibodies. Each lane was loaded with material from c. 107 CFU. (b) SopA levels in whole-cell bacteria. SopA expression was
normalized to 106 CFU and shown as arbitrary units (AU). Data are mean  SD from six different experiments. P o 0.05 between the wild-type strain at
37 1C vs. the wild-type strain at 28 1C; dam/pIZ at 37 1C vs. dam/pIZ at 28 1C; ‰P o 0.05 with respect to the wild-type and dam/pIZ strains at 37 1C,
#
 P o 0.001 with respect to the wild-type and dam/pIZ strains at 28 1C (ANOVA).

Dam mutants of Salmonella Typhimurium                                                             Table 2. qRT-PCR for sopA expression
synthesize low amounts of SopA                                                                                         Expression levels of sopA gene
We examined the effect of the absence of Dam on SopA                                                                   SPI-1-inducing                   SPI-1-non-inducing
synthesis under SPI-1-inducing (37 1C) and noninducing                                                                 conditions (37 1C)               conditions (28 1C)
(28 1C) conditions. The relative amount of the effector                                           wt                   1.000  0.002                    0.109  0.098
protein present in the whole bacterial extract was quantified.                                    dam                  0.412  0.081                   0.390  0.143
As expected, SopA was synthesized by wild-type strain                                             dam/pIZ              0.803  0.157                    0.273  0.102
grown under SPI-1 conditions (Fig. 1a). Densitometry
                                                                                                  Relative mRNA amounts were determined by qRT-PCR and related to
analysis showed a significant reduction of SopA synthesis                                         mRNA levels in wild-type strain grown under inducing conditions, set as
under SPI-1 conditions in the dam mutant compared with                                            1. Values are means  SDs from three independent experiments.
the wild-type strain (P o 0.01) and the complemented                                              Significance of difference (P o 0.05) from level in wild-type strain

strain (P o 0.05) (Fig. 1b). Compared with the wild-type                                          grown under inducing conditions was calculated by Student’s t-test.
strain, the Salmonella dam mutant expressed (under indu-
cing conditions) only 20% of the amount of SopA. Interest-                                        Dam relaxes the temperature regulation of SopA synthesis.
ingly, the dam mutant expressed SopA under noninducing                                            Our results are in agreement with previous data obtained
conditions (28 1C), whereas no synthesis of the effector was                                      from Yersinia spp., showing that Dam overproduction leads
observed in the wild-type or the complemented strain at this                                      to the expression and secretion of Yop virulence proteins
temperature. Moreover, no significant differences were                                            under nonpermissive conditions (Julio et al., 2001, 2002).
found in the amount of SopA expressed by the dam mutant                                           These authors demonstrated that Dam overproduction
grown at 37 or 28 1C (Fig. 1b). This downregulation of SopA                                       disrupts both thermal and calcium regulation of YopE
expression in dam mutants was confirmed by qRT-PCR in                                             synthesis and relaxes the thermal (but not calcium) depen-
relation to 16S rRNA gene expression. The transcript level of                                     dence of YopE secretion.
sopA was decreased in the dam mutant approximately
twofold (P o 0.05) compared with the wild-type or the
complemented strains under SPI-1-inducing conditions.                                             SopA secretion is impaired in dam mutants of
Again, no differences in the expression of sopA were detected                                     Salmonella Typhimurium
in the dam mutant grown under inducing or noninducing                                             The relative amounts of SopA were assessed in wild-type and
conditions (Table 2). These findings suggest that lack of                                         dam strain culture supernatants. Under conditions that


c 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies                                                                                  FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
SopA in Salmonella dam mutants                                                                                                                                      75

                                                  (a)    SPI-1-inducing conditions (37 °C)                           SPI-1-non-inducing conditions (28 °C)
Fig. 2. Analysis of SopA secretion in vitro by
Western blot. Salmonella Typhimurium-tagged
                                                              wt                         dam        dam/pIZ             wt              dam         dam/pIZ
strains SSM2795 (wt), STD2795 (dam) and           SopA
STD2795/pIZ833 (dam/pIZ) were grown at 37 1C
(SPI-1-inducing conditions) or at 28 1C (nonin-
                                                  (b)                               15     *
ducing conditions). (a) Bacterial supernatants
were processed and used to investigate secreted

                                                              SopA secretion (AU)
proteins. Samples were subjected to sodium
dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophor-                                     10                                                          37 °C
esis and tagged proteins were detected by anti-                                                                                                 28 °C
FLAG antibodies. Each lane was loaded with
secreted proteins from c. 107 CFU. (b) SopA                                          5
secretion levels were normalized to 106 CFU and
shown as arbitrary units (AU). Data are
mean  SD from six different experiments.                                            0
P o 0.05 (ANOVA).                                                                             wt             dam             dam/pIZ

mimic the intestinal environment (37 1C), only the wild-                             movement of polymorphonuclear leukocytes across the
type strain secreted SopA (Fig. 2a). Despite the fact that                           intestinal epithelium. In addition, Zhang et al. (2002)
SopA was expressed in dam cells grown at 37 and 28 1C                                showed that SopA acts in concert with other TTSS-1
(although in low amount), the protein could not be detected                          secreted effector proteins. In addition, Layton et al. (2005)
in the supernatants at any temperature. Moreover, SopA                               have reported that SopA localizes in the mitochondria; the
secretion in the dam mutant was not restored after com-                              correlation of this fact with the role of SopA in virulence
plementation (Fig. 2a and b). These results are in line with                         remains unknown.
our previous observation that SopA is the effector protein
secreted in the lowest amount following intragastrical or
intraperitoneal infection of mice with Salmonella Typhi-
                                                                                     Dam methylation triggers SopA synthesis in
murium (Giacomodonato et al., 2007). Lack of SopA
                                                                                     Salmonella Typhimurium intracellular bacteria
secretion in dam mutants could be explained considering                              We investigated the synthesis of SopA in dam mutants
that Dam methylation is required to activate the expression                          during early stages of HEp-2 cells infection. Confluent
of certain SPI-1 syringe-encoding genes (Balbontı́n et al.,                          HEp-2 cells were infected with SopA–FLAG-tagged Salmo-
2006). Nevertheless, dam mutants showed not only impair-                             nella mutants. Intracellular bacteria were collected 20 min
ment in SopA secretion but also a reduced synthesis of this                          after infection. As shown in Fig. 3a, the epitope-tagged SopA
effector protein. These results are in agreement with those                          could be detected specifically. Soon after infection, SopA
reported earlier showing that dam mutants of Salmonella                              appears to be expressed at a lower level in dam mutant
Typhimurium are significantly reduced in their ability to                            STD2795 compared with wild-type strain SSM2795
synthesize and secrete SipC (Balbontı́n et al. 2006). It would                       (P o 0.05). Of note, the amount of SopA detected intracel-
be premature, however, to conclude that dam strains are                              lularly in wild-type and dam strains at 20 min postinfection
totally unable to secret SopA. On the one hand, it is possible                       (Fig. 3) was fivefold higher than that synthesized by bacteria
that the amount of SopA secreted by dam mutants is below                             cultured under SPI-1-inducing condition (Fig. 1).
the detection limit of our method. On the other, Zhang et al.                           Previously, we demonstrated that the expression of SPI-1
(2005) demonstrated that SopA has a short life span.                                 genes persists for several hours after infection of mice
   A reduced secretion of the SPI-1 effector proteins such as                        (Giacomodonato et al., 2007). Then, we investigated
SipA, SipB and SipC in Salmonella dam mutants has been                               whether SopA is expressed in dam mutants during late
reported earlier (Garcı́a-Del Portillo et al., 1999). More                           stages of HEp-2 cells infection. For this purpose, HEp-2
recently, Balbontı́n et al. (2006) identified genes that are                         cells were infected and the intracellular bacteria were col-
up- or downregulated in dam mutants, indicating that Dam                             lected 24 h after infection. The results are shown in Fig. 4a
methylation represses or activates their expression. There-                          and b. We found that SopA is expressed in intracellular
fore, our results suggest that the sopA gene is activated by                         bacteria 24 h after infection. Once again, SopA was synthe-
Dam methylation. In contrast to other Salmonella effector                            sized at a lower level in the dam mutant compared with the
proteins, such as SopB, SopD and SopE2, relatively little is                         wild-type strain (P o 0.05) (Fig. 4a and b). This finding
known about SopA. An earlier work by Wood et al. (2000)                              suggests a sustained expression of these effectors after
demonstrated a role for SopA in the Salmonella-induced                               invasion. Therefore, it would be important to carefully

FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77                                                                      
                                                                                                          c    2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies
                                                                                                              Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
76                                                                                                                     M.N. Giacomodonato et al.

        (a)                                      wt   dam    dam/pIZ          Acknowledgements
        SopA                                                                  We are very grateful to Ms Marı́a Isabel Bernal for her
                                                                              excellent technical assistance and to Dr J. Casadesús for
        (b)                           1200                                    providing the SV4712 strain. This work was supported in
                                                                              part by grants from Agencia Nacional de Promoción a la
               SopA expression (AU)

                                      1000
                                                                              Ciencia y Tecnologı́a (PICT – 2006-00407) and from Uni-
                                       800                                    versidad de Buenos Aires (UBACyT M608 and M009),
                                       600                                    Argentina.
                                                       *
                                       400

                                       200
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postinfection. HEp-2 cells were infected with Salmonella Typhimurium-         Heithoff DM, Enioutina EY, Daynes RA, Sinsheimer RL, Low DA
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c 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies                                                          FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
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FEMS Microbiol Lett 292 (2009) 71–77                                                    
                                                                                        c 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies
                                                                                         Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
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