Hoffmann, R. A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters. Nature Genetics (2008)

Editor

Personal info

View

About

Terms

Javascript disabled

Please enable Javascript support in your browser to use this application.

Instructions on how to enable JavaScript on different browsers can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23852.

[edit this page]

Conde-Alvarez, R. et al.

Synthesis of phosphatidylcholine, a typical eukaryotic phospholipid, is necessary for full virulence of the intracellular bacterial parasite Brucella abortus.

Phosphatidylcholine (PC) is a typical eukaryotic phospholipid absent from most prokaryotes. Thus, its presence in some intracellular bacteria is intriguing as it may constitute host mimicry. The role of PC in Brucella abortus was examined by generating mutants in pcs (BApcs) and pmtA (BApmtA), which encode key enzymes of the two bacterial PC biosynthetic routes, the choline and methyl-transferase pathways. In rich medium, BApcs and the double mutant BApcspmtA but not BApmtA displayed reduced growth, increased phosphatidylethanolamine and no PC, showing that Pcs is essential for PC synthesis under these conditions. In minimal medium, the parental strain, BApcs and BApmtA showed reduced but significant amounts of PC suggesting that PmtA may also be functional. Probing with phage Tb, antibiotics, polycations and serum demonstrated that all mutants had altered envelopes. In macrophages, BApcs and BApcspmtA showed reduced ability to evade fusion with lysosomes and establish a replication niche. In mice, BApcs showed attenuation only at early times after infection, BApmtA at later stages and BApcspmtA throughout. The results suggest that Pcs and PmtA have complementary roles in vivo related to nutrient availability and that PC and the membrane properties that depend on this typical eukaryotic phospholipid are essential for Brucella virulence.[1]

References

Synthesis of phosphatidylcholine, a typical eukaryotic phospholipid, is necessary for full virulence of the intracellular bacterial parasite Brucella abortus. Conde-Alvarez, R., Grilló, M.J., Salcedo, S.P., de Miguel, M.J., Fugier, E., Gorvel, J.P., Moriyón, I., Iriarte, M. Cell. Microbiol. (2006) [Pubmed]

Annotations and hyperlinks in this abstract are from individual authors of WikiGenes or automatically generated by the WikiGenes Data Mining Engine. The abstract is from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.About WikiGenes Open Access Licence Privacy Policy Terms of Use apsburg

The world's first wiki where authorship really matters (Nature Genetics, 2008). Due credit and reputation for authors. Imagine a global collaborative knowledge base for original thoughts. Search thousands of articles and collaborate with scientists around the globe.