Description of staphylococcus serine protease (ssp) operon in Staphylococcus aureus and nonpolar inactivation of sspA-encoded serine protease.

ABSTRACT: Signature tagged mutagenesis has recently revealed that the Ssp serine protease (V8 protease) contributes to in vivo growth and survival of Staphylococcus aureus in different infection models, and our previous work indicated that Ssp could play a role in controlling microbial adhesion. In this study, we describe an operon structure within the ssp locus of S. aureus RN6390. The ssp gene encoding V8 protease is designated as sspA, and is followed by sspB, which encodes a 40.6-kDa cysteine protease, and sspC, which encodes a 12.9-kDa protein of unknown function. S. aureus SP6391 is an isogenic derivative of RN6390, in which specific loss of SspA function was achieved through a nonpolar allelic replacement mutation. In addition to losing SspA, the culture supernatant of SP6391 showed a loss of

SUBMITTER: Rice K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC97868 | biostudies-literature | 2001 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature