Application of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae model to study requirements for trafficking of Yersinia pestis YopM in eucaryotic cells.

YopM is a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) virulence protein that is delivered into host cells when any of the three human-pathogenic species of Yersinia binds to mammalian cells. It exhibits heterogeneity of size and sequence among the yersiniae, but the functional consequences of this variability are not yet known. Yersinia pestis YopM was previously shown to accumulate in the nuclei of infected HeLa cells by a mechanism that requires vesicular trafficking.