Construction and characterization of type III secretion system of attenuated Salmonella typhimurium

Abstract:

In order to develop a recombinant attenuated Salmonella typhimurium as oral live vaccine vector, we constructed recombinant plasmid pYA-sopENt100 by replacing the trc promoter with the sopE promoter and secretion signal sequence sopENt100 of Salmonella typhimurium on the basis of plasmid pYA3493. Then, the complementary plasmid pYA-sopENt100 was transformed into ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 by electroporation to generate attenuated Salmonella typhimurium type III secretion system ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100). We further characterized ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100). We also constructed a recombinant strain ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100-egfp) that harbored the reporter gene-enhanced green fluorescent protein (egfp) gene. Vero cells were infected with ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100-egfp) and the ability of delivery foreign antigens was tested via Western blotting analysis. The results of PCR, enzyme digestion and sequencing showed that the ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100) type III secretion system was constructed successfully. The serotype of ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100) was identical to ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 and SL1344. Compared with wild strain SL1344, the biochemical characteristics of ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100) had obvious change, but it was basically the same with ΔcrpΔasdSL1344. The growth speed was much slower than that of the wild strain SL1344. The chicken virulence test (LD50) showed that the virulence of ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100) was 7×104 times lower than SL1344. In addition, we observed the 37 kDa SopENt100-egfp protein in the cultured supernatant of ΔcrpΔasdSL1344(pYA-sopENt100-egfp) strain by Western blotting analysis. However, both the 37 kDa SopENt100-egfp protein and 27 kDa EGFP protein were detected in ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100-egfp)-infected Vero cells. These results demonstrated that the recombinant Salmonella typhimurium type III secretion system ΔcrpΔasdSL1344 (pYA-sopENt100) was successfully constructed, and it should be used as a live vaccine vector for expressing foreign genes.