Encapsulated is the predominant causative agent of pyogenic liver abscess, an emerging infectious disease that often complicates metastatic meningitis or endophthalmitis. on the lesser studied ManB and WcaJ for mutation analysis. The capsular polysaccharides of WcaJ mutant (WcaJY5F) were dramatically reduced quantitatively, and the LD50 increased by 200-fold in a mouse peritonitis model compared with the wild-type strain. However, the capsular polysaccharides of ManB mutant (ManBY26F) showed no difference in quantity, and the LD50 increased by merely 6-fold in mice test. Our study provided a clear trend that WcaJ tyrosine phosphorylation can regulate the biosynthesis of capsular polysaccharides and result in the pathogenicity of NTUH-K2044. Protein phosphorylation is one of 1235481-90-9 manufacture the most biologically relevant and ubiquitous post-translational modifications in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms. It is best known that protein phosphorylation is a reversible enzyme-catalyzed process that is controlled by various kinases and phosphatases. The aberrant functions often result in irregular protein phosphorylation and ultimately lead to serious disease states such as malignant transformation, immune disorders, and pathogenic infections in mammals (1, 2). Recently, accumulating evidences suggest that Ser/Thr/Tyr phosphorylations also contribute to regulate a diverse range of cellular responses and physiological processes in prokaryotes (1). Among them, tyrosine phosphorylation in encapsulated bacteria has been discovered to play key roles in capsular polysaccharide (CPS1; K antigen) biosynthesis, which leads to Rabbit polyclonal to UBE2V2 virulence (3, 4). This thick layer of exopolysaccharide on many pathogenic bacteria can act as a physical boundary to evade phagocytosis and complement-mediated killing and further inhibit complement activation of the host (1, 5, 6). In 1996, protein-tyrosine kinase (Ptk) was first discovered and categorized under the bacterial protein-tyrosine kinase (BY-kinase) family (1, 7, 8). Shortly after, its function in bacterial exopolysaccharide production and transport was characterized (1, 7, 8). From then on, many more 1235481-90-9 manufacture bacterial tyrosine kinases such as Wzc of (1, 9) and EpsB of (10, 11) were found to possess this conserved property; deletion of such tyrosine kinases 1235481-90-9 manufacture will result in the loss of exopolysaccharide production (12). Therefore, several experiments were conducted to investigate the role of the downstream substrates of the tyrosine kinases in different strains 1235481-90-9 manufacture of bacteria, and some targeted proteins were found to participate in the exopolysaccharide anabolism (13, 14). These findings demonstrated a direct relationship between bacterial tyrosine phosphorylation and exopolysaccharide biosynthesis that was directly reflected in the strain virulence. In the past, the functional roles of the critical components involved in protein phosphorylation were defined by basic biochemical and genetic approaches (1). However, there exists a salient gap between the growing number of identified protein-tyrosine kinases/phosphatases and the relative paucity of protein substrates characterized to date. Genomic sequence analyses and advanced high resolution/high accuracy MS systems with vastly improved phosphopeptide enrichment strategies are among the two key enabling technologies that allow a high efficiency identification of the scarcely detectable site-specific phosphorylations in bacterial systems (15). Mann (16) were the first to initiate a systematic study of the phosphoproteome of in 2007 followed by similar site-specific phosphoproteomics analyses of (17), (18), and (19). These pioneering works have since set the foundation in bacterial phosphoproteomics but have not been specifically carried out to address a particular biological issue of causal relevance to virulence or pathogenesis. is a Gram-negative, non-motile, facultative anaerobic, and rod-shaped bacterium. It is commonly found in water and soil (20) as well as on plants (21) and mucosal surfaces of mammals, such 1235481-90-9 manufacture as human, horse, and swine (22, 23). It was demonstrated that CPS on the surface of is the prime factor of virulence and toxicity in causing pyogenic liver abscess (PLA), a common intra-abdominal infection with a high 10C30% mortality rate worldwide (24C29). There are also variations in virulence in regard to different capsular serotypes; K1.