Vibrio vulnificus is a food-borne bacterial pathogen associated with 1% of all food-related deaths, predominantly because of consumption of contaminated seafood. The ability of V. vulnificus to cause disease is linked to the production of a large cytotoxin called the "multifunctional-autoprocessing RTX" (MARTX Vv ) toxin, a factor shown here to be an important virulence factor by the intragastric route of infection in mice. In this study, we examined genetic variation of the rtxA1 gene that encodes MARTX Vv in 40 V. vulnificus Biotype 1 strains and found four distinct variants of rtxA1 that encode toxins with different arrangements of effector domains. We provide evidence that these variants arose by recombination either with rtxA genes carried on plasmids or with the rtxA gene of Vibrio anguillarum. Contrary to expected results, the most common rtxA1 gene variant in clinical-type V. vulnificus encodes a toxin with reduced potency and is distinct from the toxin produced by strains isolated from market oysters. These results indicate that an important virulence factor of V. vulnificus is undergoing significant genetic rearrangement and may be subject to selection for reduced virulence in the environment. This finding would imply further that in the future on-going genetic variation of the MARTX Vv toxins could result in the emergence of novel strains with altered virulence in humans.phylogeny | RTX | oyster T he gram-negative bacterial pathogen Vibrio vulnificus inhabits coastal waters including the US Gulf Coast. The pathogen causes gastroenteritis, primary septicemia, and necrotizing fasciitis and can be difficult to treat. The bacteria are particularly rapid growers in vivo and are highly invasive; thus death can occur as quickly as 24-48 h after ingestion (1, 2). In the United States from 1998-2008, 985 cases of V. vulnificus infection resulting in 91 deaths were reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Of these cases, 60% were caused by food-borne illness, particularly associated with the consumption of raw seafood (3). In fact, V. vulnificus accounts for 1% of all food-related deaths in the United States (4). Numerous studies recently have described a V. vulnificus multifunctional-autoprocessing RTX toxin (MARTX Vv ) as having a major impact on virulence in mice (5-8). Toxins of the MARTX family are very large composite toxins. The 5,206-amino acid MARTX Vv toxin as found in the two sequenced strains of V. vulnificus, Korean isolate CMCP6 and Taiwanese isolate YJ016 (9, 10), are 99% identical. Similar to all MARTX toxins, the majority of MARTX Vv is comprised of conserved repeat regions at the N and C termini that are proposed to form a pore in the eukaryotic cell plasma membrane for translocation of the central portion of the secreted toxin to the cytosol (11). The central region includes a conserved cysteine protease domain (CPD) that is required for inositol hexakisphosphate-induced autoprocessing. After translocation, autoprocessing at leucine residues in unstructured regions between the effector do...

Vibrio vulnificus is a pathogen that causes both severe necrotizing wound infections and life-threatening food-borne infections. Food-borne infection is particularly lethal as the infection can progress rapidly to primary septicemia resulting in death from septic shock and multiorgan failure. In this study, we use both bioluminescence whole animal imaging and V. vulnificus bacterial colonization of orally infected mice to demonstrate that the secreted multifunctional-autoprocessing RTX toxin (MARTX Vv ) and the cytolysin/hemolysin VvhA of clinical isolate CMCP6 have an important function in the gut to promote early in vivo growth and dissemination of this pathogen from the small intestine to other organs. Using histopathology, we find that both cytotoxins can cause villi disruption, epithelial necrosis, and inflammation in the mouse small intestine. A double mutant deleted of genes for both cytotoxins was essentially avirulent, did not cause intestinal epithelial tissue damage, and was cleared from infected mice by 36 hours by an effective immune response. Therefore, MARTX Vv and VvhA seem to play an additive role for pathogenesis of CMCP6 causing intestinal tissue damage and inflammation that then promotes dissemination of the infecting bacteria to the bloodstream and other organs. In the absence of these two secreted factors, we propose that this bacterium is unable to cause intestinal infection in humans.

Vibrio vulnificus is an environmental organism that causes both food-borne and wound infections with high morbidity and mortality in humans. The annual incidence and global distribution of infections associated with this pathogen are increasing with climate change. In the late 1990s, an outbreak of tilapia-associated wound infections in Israel was linked to a previously unrecognized variant of V. vulnificus designated biotype 3. The sudden emergence and clonality of the outbreak suggest that this strain may be a true newly emergent pathogen with novel virulence properties compared to those of other V. vulnificus strains. In a subcutaneous infection model to mimic wound infection, the multifunctional autoprocessing RTX (MARTX) toxin of biotype 3 strains was shown to be an essential virulence factor contributing to highly inflammatory skin wounds with severe damage affecting every tissue layer. We conducted a sequencing-based analysis of the MARTX toxin and found that biotype 3 MARTX toxin has an effector domain structure distinct from that of either biotype 1 or biotype 2. Of the two new domains identified, a domain similar to Pseudomonas aeruginosa ExoY was shown to confer adenylate cyclase activity on the MARTX toxin. This is the first demonstration that the biotype 3 MARTX toxin is essential for virulence and that the ExoY-like MARTX effector domain is a catalytically active adenylate cyclase.

Quorum sensing has been implicated as an important global regulatory system controlling the expression of numerous virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. In the present study, DNA targets of SmcR, a Vibrio vulnificus LuxR homologue, were selected from a random pool of DNA fragments by using a cycle selection procedure consisting of in vitro DNA-SmcR interaction, purification of SmcR-DNA complexes, and PCR amplification of SmcR-bound DNA. The amplified DNA fragments were cloned and analyzed separately by electrophoretic mobility shift assay to verify the specific binding of SmcR to the DNA. The DNA sequences bound by SmcR were determined by DNase I footprinting, and alignment of the resulting 29 sequences revealed a 22-bp consensus SmcR-binding sequence, 5-TTAT-TGATWWRWTWNTNAATAA-3 (where W represents A or T, R is G or A, and N is any nucleotide), with an 8-bp (TTATT-GAT) inverted repeat. The consensus sequence revealed greater efficiency for the binding of SmcR than the SmcR-binding sequence previously identified within P vvpE . Mutational analysis demonstrated that the 9th and 10th bases from the center are the most essential for SmcR binding. A genome-wide search using the consensus sequence predicted that at least 121 genes are under the control of SmcR, and 10 of these newly identified SmcR regulon members were verified as being regulated by SmcR in V. vulnificus as well as in vitro. The consensus sequence and newly identified genes should be of use for elucidating the regulatory mechanism of SmcR and provide further insight into the role of the quorum sensing in V. vulnificus pathogenesis.Bacterial pathogenicity is multifactorial and a complex phenomenon that involves the products of many genes, collectively called virulence factors (1). Expression of many of these virulence factors is coordinately controlled by a common global regulatory system in response to environmental signals. This coordinate regulation facilitates cooperation of the virulence factors and is crucial for the overall success of the infectious microorganisms during pathogenesis (2). Many bacteria monitor their cell population densities through the exchange of diffusible signal molecules (autoinducer (AI) 4 ) that accumulate extracellularly (for recent reviews, see Refs. 3 and 4). This type of communication, termed quorum sensing, has been recognized as a global regulatory system controlling the expression of numerous virulence factors in bacterial pathogens (for recent reviews, see Refs. 5 and 6). When the concentration of the various AIs increases to critical levels, a signal transduction cascade triggered through cognate receptors alters the expression of over 50 genes or operons (7).The cell density-dependent regulation of bioluminescence in Vibrio harveyi is frequently used as a model for quorum sensing. V. harveyi LuxR is the transcriptional activator of the luminescence operon, and its synthesis is controlled by the levels of three autoinducers, AI-1, AI-2, and CAI-1 (4). To date, homologues of LuxR, which are postulated to regu...

N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac, sialic acid) could provide a good substrate for enteropathogenic bacteria in the intestine, when the bacteria invade and colonize in human gut. In order to analyze the role of Neu5Ac catabolism in Vibrio vulnificus pathogenesis, a mutant with disruption of the nanA gene encoding Neu5Ac lyase was constructed by allelic exchanges. The nanA mutant was not able to utilize Neu5Ac as a sole carbon source and revealed an altered colony morphotype with reduced opacity in the presence of Neu5Ac. Compared to the wild type, the nanA mutant exhibited a low level of cytotoxicity toward INT-407 epithelial cells in vitro and reduced virulence in a mouse model. The disruption of nanA also resulted in a substantial decrease in histopathological damage in jejunum and colon tissues from the mouse intestine. These results indicated that NanA plays an important role in V. vulnificus pathogenesis. In addition, the nanA mutant was significantly diminished in growth with and adherence to INT-407 epithelial cells in vitro, and was defective for intestinal colonization, reflecting the impaired ability of the mutant to grow and survive with, persist in, and adhere to the intestine in vivo. Consequently, the combined results suggest that NanA and the capability of catabolic utilization of Neu5Ac contribute to V. vulnificus virulence by ensuring growth, adhesion, and survival during infection.