Disease relevance of pilP

• As predicted by the presence of a consensus lipoprotein signal sequence, PilP expressed in both Escherichia coli and Gc could be labelled with [3H]-palmitic acid [1].
• PilP, a pilus biogenesis lipoprotein in Neisseria gonorrhoeae, affects expression of PilQ as a high-molecular-mass multimer [1].

High impact information on pilP

• Gonococcal mutants bearing transposon insertions in these ORFs were non-piliated and failed to express pilus-associated phenotypes, and the corresponding genes were designated PilO and pilP [1].
• PilP- as well as PilQ- mutants shed PilC, a protein which facilitates pilus assembly and is implicated in epithelial cell adherence, in a soluble form [1].
• PilO and PilP did not have homologues in the sequence databases, but the predicted PilN amino acid sequence displayed similarity to XpsL from Xanthamonas campestris, a protein required for protein secretion [2].

Biological context of pilP

• Combined with the finding that levels of multimerized PiIQ were greatly reduced in PilP- mutants, the results suggest that PilP is required for PilQ function and that PilQ and PilC may interact during the terminal stages of pilus biogenesis [1].

References