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Brucella species are facultative intracellular Gram-negative bacteria relevant to animal and human health. Their ability to establish an intracellular niche and subvert host cell pathways to their advantage depends on the delivery of bacterial effector proteins through a type IV secretion system. Brucella Toll/Interleukin-1 Receptor (TIR)-domain-containing proteins BtpA (also known as TcpB) and BtpB are among such effectors. Although divergent in primary sequence, they interfere with Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling to inhibit the innate immune responses. However, the molecular mechanisms implicated still remain unclear. To gain insight into the functions of BtpA and BtpB, we expressed them in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a eukaryotic cell model. We found that both effectors were cytotoxic and that their respective TIR domains were necessary and sufficient for yeast growth inhibition. Growth arrest was concomitant with actin depolymerization, endocytic block and a general decrease in kinase activity in the cell, suggesting a failure in energetic metabolism. Indeed, levels of ATP and NAD+ were low in yeast cells expressing BtpA and BtpB TIR domains, consistent with the recently described enzymatic activity of some TIR domains as NAD+ hydrolases. In human epithelial cells, both BtpA and BtpB expression reduced intracellular total NAD levels. In infected cells, both BtpA and BtpB contributed to reduction of total NAD, indicating that their NAD+ hydrolase functions are active intracellularly during infection. Overall, combining the yeast model together with mammalian cells and infection studies our results show that BtpA and BtpB modulate energy metabolism in host cells through NAD+ hydrolysis, assigning a novel role for these TIR domain-containing effectors in Brucella pathogenesis., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is recognized as an urgent threat to human health due to the increasing isolation of multidrug resistant strains. Hypervirulent strains are a major concern due to their ability to cause life-threating infections in healthy hosts. The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is widely implicated in microbial antagonism, and it mediates interactions with host eukaryotic cells in some cases. In silico search for genes orthologous to T6SS component genes and T6SS effector genes across 700 K. pneumoniae genomes shows extensive diversity in T6SS genes across the K. pneumoniae species. Temperature, oxygen tension, pH, osmolarity, iron levels, and NaCl regulate the expression of the T6SS encoded by a hypervirulent K. pneumoniae strain. Polymyxins and human defensin 3 also increase the activity of the T6SS. A screen for regulators governing T6SS uncover the correlation between the transcription of the T6SS and the ability to kill E. coli prey. Whereas H-NS represses the T6SS, PhoPQ, PmrAB, Hfq, Fur, RpoS and RpoN positively regulate the T6SS. K. pneumoniae T6SS mediates intra and inter species bacterial competition. This antagonism is only evident when the prey possesses an active T6SS. The PhoPQ two component system governs the activation of K. pneumoniae T6SS in bacterial competitions. Mechanistically, PhoQ periplasmic domain, and the acid patch within, is essential to activate K. pneumoniae T6SS. Klebsiella T6SS also mediates anti-fungal competition. We have delineated the contribution of each of the individual VgrGs in microbial competition and identified VgrG4 as a T6SS effector. The DUF2345 domain of VgrG4 is sufficient to intoxicate bacteria and yeast. ROS generation mediates the antibacterial effects of VgrG4, and the antitoxin Sel1E protects against the toxic activity of VgrG4. Our findings provide a better understanding of the regulation of the T6SS in bacterial competitions, and place ROS as an early event in microbial competition., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

Many bacterial pathogens use specialized secretion systems to deliver virulence effector proteins into eukaryotic host cells. The function of these effectors depends on their localization within infected cells, but the mechanisms determining subcellular targeting of each effector are mostly elusive. Here, we show that the Salmonella type III secretion effector SteA binds specifically to phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate [PI(4)P]. Ectopically expressed SteA localized at the plasma membrane (PM) of eukaryotic cells. However, SteA was displaced from the PM of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in mutants unable to synthesize the local pool of PI(4)P and from the PM of HeLa cells after localized depletion of PI(4)P. Moreover, in infected cells, bacterially translocated or ectopically expressed SteA localized at the membrane of the Salmonella-containing vacuole (SCV) and to Salmonella-induced tubules; using the PI(4)P-binding domain of the Legionella type IV secretion effector SidC as probe, we found PI(4)P at the SCV membrane and associated tubules throughout Salmonella infection of HeLa cells. Both binding of SteA to PI(4)P and the subcellular localization of ectopically expressed or bacterially translocated SteA were dependent on a lysine residue near the N-terminus of the protein. Overall, this indicates that binding of SteA to PI(4)P is necessary for its localization within host cells., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Coxiella burnetii is a Gram-negative obligate parasitic bacterium that causes the disease Q-fever in humans. To establish its intracellular niche, it utilizes the Icm/Dot type IVB secretion system (T4BSS) to inject protein effectors into the host cell cytoplasm. The host targets of most cognate and candidate T4BSS-translocated effectors remain obscure. We used the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model to express and study six C. burnetii effectors, namely AnkA, AnkB, AnkF, CBU0077, CaeA and CaeB, in search for clues about their role in C. burnetii virulence. When ectopically expressed in HeLa cells, these effectors displayed distinct subcellular localizations. Accordingly, GFP fusions of these proteins produced in yeast also decorated distinct compartments, and most of them altered cell growth. CaeA was ubiquitinated both in yeast and mammalian cells and, in S. cerevisiae, accumulated at juxtanuclear quality-control compartments (JUNQs) and insoluble protein deposits (IPODs), characteristic of aggregative or misfolded proteins. AnkA, which was not ubiquitinated, accumulated exclusively at the IPOD. CaeA, but not AnkA or the other effectors, caused oxidative damage in yeast. We discuss that CaeA and AnkA behavior in yeast may rather reflect misfolding than recognition of conserved targets in the heterologous system. In contrast, CBU0077 accumulated at vacuolar membranes and abnormal ER extensions, suggesting that it interferes with vesicular traffic, whereas AnkB associated with the yeast nucleolus. Both effectors shared common localization features in HeLa and yeast cells. Our results support the idea that C. burnetii T4BSS effectors manipulate multiple host cell targets, which can be conserved in higher and lower eukaryotic cells. However, the behavior of CaeA and AnkA prompt us to conclude that heterologous protein aggregation and proteostatic stress can be a limitation to be considered when using the yeast model to assess the function of bacterial effectors.

The phosphoinositide phosphatase SopB/SigD is a type III secretion system effector that plays multiple roles in Salmonella internalization and intracellular survival. We previously reported that SopB complexed with and inhibited the small GTPase Cdc42 when expressed in a yeast model system, independently of its phosphatase activity. Here we show that human Cdc42, but not Rac1, interacts with catalytically inactive SopB when coexpressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This interaction occurs with both constitutively active and non-activatable Cdc42, suggesting that SopB binds Cdc42 independently of its activation state. By mutational analysis we have narrowed the Cdc42-interacting region of SopB to the first 142 amino acids, and isolated a collection of point mutations in this region, mainly affecting leucine residues conserved in the related Shigella IpgD protein. Such mutations yielded SopB unable to interact with Cdc42 but maintained phosphatase activity. SopB mutant proteins defective for binding Cdc42 were ubiquitinated upon translocation in mammalian cells, but their localization to the Salmonella-containing vacuole was reduced compared with wild-type SopB. Whereas invasion of mammalian cells by Salmonella bearing these sopB mutations was not affected, intracellular replication was less efficient, suggesting that SopB-Cdc42 interaction contributes to the adaptation of Salmonella to the intracellular environment., (© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

Through acute enteric infection, Salmonella invades host enterocytes and reproduces intracellularly into specialized vacuolae. This involves changes in host cell signaling elicited by bacterial proteins delivered via type III secretion systems (TTSS). One of the two TTSSs of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium encoded by the Salmonella pathogenicity island-1, triggers bacterial internalization. Among the effector proteins translocated by this TTSS, the GTPase modulator SopE/E2 and the phosphoinositide phosphatase SigD are known to play key roles in these processes. To better understand their contribution to re-programming host cell pathways, we used ZeptoMARK reverse-phase protein array technology, which allows printing 32-sample lysate arrays that can be analyzed with phospho-specific antibodies to evaluate the phosphorylation of signaling proteins. Lysates were obtained at different times after infection of HeLa cells with WT, TTSS-deficient, sopE/E2 and sigD single and double deletants, as well as different sigD Salmonella mutants. Our analysis detected activation of p38, JNK and ERK mitogen-activated protein kinases, mainly dependent on SopE/E2, as well as SigD-dependent phosphorylation of PKB/Akt and its targets GSK-3beta and FKHR/FoxO. This is the first time that reverse-phase protein array technology is used in the cellular microbiology field, demonstrating its value to screen for host signaling events through bacterial infection.

Heterologous expression of bacterial virulence factors in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a feasible approach to study their molecular function. The authors have previously reported that the Salmonella typhimurium SigD protein, a phosphatidylinositol phosphatase involved in invasion of the host cell, inhibits yeast growth, presumably by depleting an essential pool of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate, and also that a catalytically inactive version, SigD(R468A), was able to arrest growth by a different mechanism that involved disruption of the actin cytoskeleton. This paper describes marked differences between the phenotypes elicited by expression of SigD and SigD(R468A) in yeast. First, expression of SigD(R468A) caused accumulation of large unbudded cells and loss of septin organization, while SigD expression caused none of these effects. Second, growth inhibition by SigD(R468A) was mediated by a cell cycle arrest in G2 dependent on the Swe1 morphogenetic checkpoint, but SigD-induced growth inhibition was cell cycle independent. And third, SigD caused strong activation of the yeast MAP kinase Slt2, whereas SigD(R468A) rather inactivated another MAP kinase, Kss1. In a screen for suppressors of SigD(R468A)-induced growth arrest by overexpression of a yeast cDNA library, the Cdc42 GTPase was isolated. Furthermore, SigD(R468A) was co-purified with Cdc42 from yeast lysates. It is concluded that the Salmonella SigD protein deprived of its phosphatase activity is able to disrupt yeast morphogenesis by interfering with Cdc42 function, opening the possibility that the SigD N-terminal region might directly modulate small GTPases from the host during infection.

The internalization of Salmonella into epithelial cells relies on the function of bacterial proteins which are injected into the cell by a specialized type III secretion system. Such bacterial effectors interfere with host cell signalling and induce local cytoskeletal rearrangements. One of such effectors is SigD/SopB, which shares homology with mammalian inositol phosphatases. We made use of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae model for elucidating new aspects of SigD function. Endogenous expression of SigD in yeast caused severe growth inhibition. Surprisingly, sigD alleles mutated in the catalytic site or even deleted for the whole C-terminal phosphatase domain still inhibited yeast growth by inducing loss of actin polarization and precluding the budding process. Accordingly, when expressed in HeLa cells, the same sigD alleles lost the ability of depleting phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate from the plasma membrane, but still caused disappearance of actin fibres and loss of adherence. We delineate a region of 25 amino acids (residues 118-142) that is necessary for the effect of SigD on actin in HeLa cells. Our data indicate that SigD exerts a toxic effect linked to its N-terminal region and independent of its phosphatase activity.

EspG is a conserved protein encoded by the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE) of attaching and effacing (A/E) pathogens, including enteropathogenic and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli and Citrobacter rodentium. EspG is delivered into infected host cells by a type III secretion system. The role of EspG in virulence has not yet been defined. Here we describe experiments that probe the virulence characteristics and biological activities of EspG in vitro and in vivo. A C. rodentium espG mutant displayed a significantly reduced ability to colonize C57BL/6 mice and to cause colonic hyperplasia. Epitope-tagged EspG was detected in the apical regions of infected colonic epithelial cells in infected mice, partially localizing with another LEE-encoded effector protein, Tir. EspG was found to interact with mammalian tubulin in both genetic screens and gel overlay assays. Binding to tubulin by EspG caused localized microtubule depolymerization, resulting in actin stress fiber formation through an undefined mechanism. Heterologous expression of EspG in yeast resulted in loss of cytoplasmic microtubule structure and function, preventing coordination between bud development and nuclear division. Yeast expressing EspG were also unable to control cortical actin polarity. We suggest that EspG contributes to the ability of A/E pathogens to establish infection through a modulation of the host cytoskeleton involving transient microtubule destruction and actin polymerization in a manner akin to the Shigella flexneri VirA protein.