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All or Nothing Surface Exposure of the Lipoprotein Pal in Escherichia coli
Author(s) -
Shaw Juliana,
MacPherson Victoria,
Barnard David,
D'Arcy Brooke,
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.886.13
Subject(s) - escherichia coli , nothing , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , biochemistry , philosophy , gene , epistemology
Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) is a diverse Gram‐negative bacterium that can live symbiotically in a person's gut or in some cases cause serious illnesses such as bacteremia or septicemia. Pal is a lipoprotein in E. coli known to interact with TolB, OmpA, and Lpp in the Tol‐Pal complex. Recently, we showed that Pal exhibits a unique dual orientation in which one population of Pal faces into the cell while a second population of Pal faces out of the cell. We employed confocal microscopy and flow cytometry to further investigate the two orientations of Pal and elucidate the percentage of exposed Pal in an E. coli population. Results from our study suggest that the great majority of E. coli do not have Pal on their cell surface and only a minority of cells exhibit surface exposed Pal. We consider the biological implications of dual orientated Pal, and propose an important role for surface Pal in the pathogenesis of E. coli sepsis.