Discovery of bacterial fimbria–glycan interactions using whole-cell recombinant escherichia coli expression

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
File version

Version of Record (VoR)

Author(s)
Day, CJ
Lo, AW
Hartley-Tassell, LE
Pilar Argente, M
Poole, J
King, NP
Tiralongo, J
Jennings, MP
Schembri, MA
Primary Supervisor
Other Supervisors
Editor(s)
Date
2021
Size
File type(s)
Location
Abstract

Chaperone-usher (CU) fimbriae are the most abundant Gram-negative bacterial fimbriae, with 38 distinct CU fimbria types described in Escherichia coli alone. Some E. coli CU fimbriae have been well characterized and bind to specific glycan targets to confer tissue tropism. For example, type 1 fimbriae bind to α-D-mannosylated glycoproteins such as uroplakins in the bladder via their tip-located FimH adhesin, leading to colonization and invasion of the bladder epithelium. Despite this, the receptor-binding affinity of many other E. coli CU fimbria types remains poorly characterized. Here, we used a recombinant E. coli strain expressing different CU fimbriae, in conjunction with glycan array analysis comprising >300 gly-cans, to dissect CU fimbria receptor specificity. We initially validated the approach by demonstrating the purified FimH lectin-binding domain and recombinant E. coli expressing type 1 fimbriae bound to a similar set of glycans. This technique was then used to map the glycan binding affinity of six additional CU fimbriae, namely, P, F1C, Yqi, Mat/Ecp, K88, and K99 fimbriae. The binding affinity was determined using whole-bacterial-cell surface plasmon resonance. This work describes new infor-mation in fimbrial specificity and a rapid and scalable system to define novel adhe-sin-glycan interactions that underpin bacterial colonization and disease. IMPORTANCE Understanding the tropism of pathogens for host and tissue requires a complete understanding of the host receptors targeted by fimbrial adhesins. Furthermore, blocking adhesion is a promising strategy to counter increasing antibiotic resistance and is enabled by the identification of host receptors. Here, we use a defined E. coli heterologous expression system to identify glycan receptors for six chaperone-usher fimbriae and identify novel receptors that are consistent with their known function. The same system was used to measure the kinetics of binding to the identified glycan, wherein bacterial cells were immobilized onto a biosensor chip and the interactions with glycans were quantified by surface plasmon resonance. This novel, dual-level analysis, where screening for the repertoire of glycan binding and the hierarchy of affinity of the identified ligands is determined directly from a natively expressed fimbrial structure on the bacterial cell surface, is superior in both throughput and biological relevance.

Journal Title

mBio

Conference Title
Book Title
Edition
Volume

12

Issue

1

Thesis Type
Degree Program
School
Publisher link
Patent number
Funder(s)
Grant identifier(s)
Rights Statement
Rights Statement

© 2021 Day et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Item Access Status
Note
Access the data
Related item(s)
Subject

Microbiology

Biochemistry and cell biology

Medical microbiology

Persistent link to this record
Citation

Day, CJ; Lo, AW; Hartley-Tassell, LE; Pilar Argente, M; Poole, J; King, NP; Tiralongo, J; Jennings, MP; Schembri, MA, Discovery of bacterial fimbria–glycan interactions using whole-cell recombinant escherichia coli expression, mBio, 2021, 12 (1), pp. 1-10

Collections