Type IV pili are required for social gliding motility in Myxococcus xanthus. In this work, the expression of pilin (the pilA gene product) during vegetative growth and fruiting-body development was examined. A polyclonal antibody against the pilA gene product (prepilin) was prepared, along with a pilA-lacZ fusion, and was used to assay expression of pilA in M. xanthus in different mutant backgr...

PilA is the putative DNA-binding component of a two-component system that regulates transcription of the pilin expression locus (pilE) of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Here we report the purification of the PilA protein and characterization of its DNA-binding activity. PilA was overproduced in Escherichia coli with an isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG)-inducible expression vector. Cell extr...

As prokaryotic models for multicellular development, Stigmatella aurantiaca and Myxococcus xanthus share many similarities in terms of social behaviors, such as gliding motility. Our current understanding of myxobacterial grouped-cell motilities comes mainly from the research on M. xanthus, which shows that filamentous type IV pili (TFP), composed of type IV pilin (also called PilA protein) sub...

The pilA gene of Neisseria gonorrhoeae was initially identified in a screen for transcriptional regulators of pilE, the expression locus for pilin, the major structural component of gonococcal pili. The predicted protein sequence for PilA has significant homology to two GTPases of the mammalian signal recognition particle (SRP), SRP54 and SRalpha. Homologs of SRP54 and SRalpha were subsequently...

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the leading cause of meningitis in newborn infants. Bacterial cell surface appendages, known as pili, have been recently described in streptococcal pathogens, including GBS. The pilus tip adhesin, PilA, contributes to GBS adherence to blood-brain barrier (BBB) endothelium; however, the host receptor and the contribution of PilA in central nervous system (CNS) dise...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa as an opportunistic human pathogen that causes lethal infections in immunocompromised patients. Type IV pili are critical factors in virulence and colonization of P. aeruginosa in acute burn wound infection. The immunogenicity and efficacy of P. aeruginosa recombinant PilA (r-PilA) was evaluated in an experimental model of burn wound sepsis as a vaccine candidate. In this...

Pili are hair-like structures protruding from the cell envelope of bacterial cells. Here, we describe the conditional and differential display of PilA-type pili, and PilE and PilF proteins, encoded from pilin gene cluster 1 at the surface of a hospital-acquired Enterococcus faecium bloodstream isolate (E1165) and a community-derived stool isolate (E1039), at two different temperatures. Both str...

Streptococcus agalactiae (or Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is a commensal bacterium present in the intestinal and urinary tracts of approximately 30% of humans. We and others previously showed that the PI-2a pilus polymers, made of the backbone pilin PilB, the tip adhesin PilA and the cell wall anchor protein PilC, promote adhesion to host epithelia and biofilm formation. Affinity-purified PI-2a ...

Vibrio vulnificus expresses a multitude of cell-associated and secreted factors that potentially contribute to pathogenicity, although the specific roles of most of these factors have been difficult to define. Previously we have shown that a mutation in pilD (originally designated vvpD), which encodes a type IV prepilin peptidase/N-methyltransferase, abolishes expression of surface pili, sugges...

Type IV pili (T4P) are major virulence factors of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) that are associated with primary adhesion, biofilm formation and twitching motility. This study focuses on the introduction of a novel biologically active subunit vaccine derived from the disulfide loop (DSL) of P. aeruginosa pilin. We investigated the expression of the novel PilA in-frame with pET26b vecto...