Sensing and response to changes in nutrient availability are essential for the lifestyle of environmental and pathogenic bacteria. Serine/threonine protein kinase G (PknG) is required for virulence of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and its putative substrate GarA regulates the tricarboxylic acid cycle in M. tuberculosis and other Actinobacteria by protein-protein binding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Burkholderia pseudomallei is the causative agent of melioidosis, a severe invasive disease of humans and animals. Initial screening of a B. pseudomallei signature-tagged mutagenesis library identified an attenuated mutant with a transposon insertion in a gene encoding the sensor component of an uncharacterised two-component signal transduction system (TCSTS), which we designated BprRS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBurkholderia pseudomallei is the causative agent of the severe tropical disease melioidosis, which commonly presents as sepsis. The B. pseudomallei K96243 genome encodes eleven predicted autotransporters, a diverse family of secreted and outer membrane proteins often associated with virulence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe autotransporters are a large and diverse family of bacterial secreted and outer membrane proteins, which are present in many Gram-negative bacterial pathogens and play a role in numerous environmental and virulence-associated interactions. As part of a larger systematic study on the autotransporters of Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of the severe tropical disease melioidosis, we have constructed an insertion mutant in the bpss1439 gene encoding an unstudied predicted trimeric autotransporter adhesin. The bpss1439 mutant demonstrated a significant reduction in biofilm formation at 48 hours in comparison to its parent 10276 wild-type strain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBurkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of melioidosis, is a Gram-negative saprophytic bacterium capable of surviving within phagocytic cells. To assess the role of BopC (a type III secreted effector protein) in the pathogenesis of B. pseudomallei, a B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBurkholderia pseudomallei and Burkholderia mallei are closely related Gram-negative bacteria responsible for the infectious diseases melioidosis and glanders, respectively. Autotransporters (ATs) comprise a large and diverse family of secreted and outer membrane proteins that includes virulence-associated invasins, adhesins, proteases, and actin-nucleating factors. The B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMelioidosis, a febrile illness with disease states ranging from acute pneumonia or septicaemia to chronic abscesses, was first documented by Whitmore & Krishnaswami (1912). The causative agent, Burkholderia pseudomallei, was subsequently identified as a motile, gram-negative bacillus, which is principally an environmental saprophyte. Melioidosis has become an increasingly important disease in endemic areas such as northern Thailand and Australia (Currie et al.
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