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Biological Significance of Dual Oriented Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae Vaccine Candidate P6
Author(s) -
Reulbach Casey,
Shaul Jeffrey,
Pichichero Michael,
Michel Lea
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.571.10
Subject(s) - haemophilus influenzae , microbiology and biotechnology , bacterial outer membrane , population , flow cytometry , pneumonia , biology , immunology , bacteremia , sepsis , medicine , escherichia coli , gene , antibiotics , biochemistry , environmental health
Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) are pathogenic bacteria and the cause such diseases as pneumonia, bacteremia, meningitis, and sepsis in adults. NTHi is also linked to 30‐35% of the roughly 25 million annual cases (in The United States) of acute otitis media (ear infections) in children. Vaccines against encapsulated strains of Hi have proven effective, but no vaccines are available in the US to protect against NTHi. The 16‐kDa outer membrane lipoprotein P6 has been shown to be nearly homologous in all tested NTHi strains, making it one of the leading vaccine candidates for NTHi. However, it was recently demonstrated, using flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and other biochemical methods, that P6 exhibits dual orientation in the outer membrane of NTHi. A small percentage of the P6 population faces out of the cell while a much larger percentage faces in toward the periplasm. However, these studies were only performed on a single strain of NTHi, which was cultured in a laboratory under aerobic conditions. In order to gain insight into P6′s in vivo orientation(s), similar studies were performed on multiple clinically‐relevant strains of NTHi and on NTHi cultured under different physiologically‐relevant conditions. Results suggest that P6 localization does not vary between strains, but localization does change in response to varying culture conditions.