One of the resulting plasmids, pSAT-8, containing the resistance

One of the resulting plasmids, pSAT-8, containing the resistance cassette in the

same orientation as the deleted gene, was confirmed by restriction digestion and sequencing and subsequently used to mutate meningococcal strains by natural transformation and allelic exchange as previously described [31]. Mutation of gapA-1 was confirmed by PCR analysis and immunoblotting. Complementation of gapA-1 Plasmid pSAT-12, which we previously used to complement the meningococcal cbbA gene [29] was subjected to inverse PCR using the primers pSAT-12iPCR(IF) and pSAT-12iPCR(IR) (Table 2). This resulted in deletion BI-D1870 of the cbbA coding sequence but leaving the upstream cbbA-promoter sequence intact and introduced a unique BglII site to facilitate the cloning of gapA-1 downstream of the promoter. The gapA-1 coding sequence was amplified from strain MC58 using the primers gapA1_Comp(F)2 and gapA1_Comp(R)2 (Table 2) incorporating BamHI-sites into the amplified fragment. The BamHI-digested fragment was then introduced into the BglII site to yield pSAT-14. This vector therefore contained the gapA-1 PF-02341066 in vivo coding sequence under the control of the cbbA promoter and downstream of this, an erythromycin resistance gene. These elements

were flanked by the MC58 genes NMB0102 and NMB0103. pSAT-14 was then used to transform MC58ΔgapA-1 by natural transformation, thus introducing a single chromosomal copy of gapA-1 under the control of the cbbA promoter and the downstream erythromycin resistance cassette in the intergenic region between NMB0102 and NMB0103. Insertion of the gapA-1 gene and erythromycin resistance cassette at the ectopic site was confirmed by PCR analysis and sequencing. Flow cytometry These experiments were click here performed essentially as previously described [29]. Briefly, 1 × 107 CFU aliquots of N. meningitidis were incubated for 2 h with rabbit anti-GapA-1-specific polyclonal antiserum (RαGapA-1) (1:500 diluted in PBS containing 0.1% BSA, 0.1% sodium azide and 2% foetal calf serum) and untreated cells were used as a control. Cells

were washed with PBS and incubated for 2 h with goat anti-rabbit IgG-Alexa Fluor 488 conjugate (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA; diluted 1:50 in PBS containing 0.1% BSA, 0.1% sodium azide and 2% foetal calf serum). Immune system Again, untreated cells were used as a control. Finally, the samples were washed before being fixed in 1 ml PBS containing 0.5% formaldehyde. Samples were analyzed for fluorescence using a Coulter Altra Flow Cytometer. Cells were detected using forward and log-side scatter dot plots, and a gating region was set to exclude cell debris and aggregates of bacteria. A total of 50,000 bacteria (events) were analyzed. Association and invasion assays Association and invasion assays were performed essentially as previously described [29].

Comments are closed.