Abstract
A critical first step in bacterial virulence and colonization is adherence to mucosal surfaces, often mediated by fimbriae and other protein adhesins. Here are described three short methods for studying these surface proteins and their behaviors, using protocols developed for the opportunistic pathogen Proteus mirabilis. Unlike the mannose-binding type 1 fimbriae produced by Escherichia coli, most P. mirabilis strains produce mannose-resistant/Proteus-like (MR/P) fimbriae. Both types of fimbrial production and adhesion can be easily demonstrated by a simple and economical hemagglutination assay which uses a model system of erythrocytes. The second and third fimbrial methods presented here show how to shear surface-exposed proteins and use acid treatment to separate interlocked fimbrial subunits into monomers.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Jessica Schaffer for refinement of the shear prep protocol and example of silver-stained sheared proteins. We also thank Xin Li and Chelsea Lane for tailoring the acid treatment protocol to P. mirabilis.
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Himpsl, S.D., Pearson, M.M., Mobley, H.L.T. (2019). Using Hemagglutination, Surface Shearing, and Acid Treatment to Study Fimbriae in Proteus mirabilis. In: Pearson, M. (eds) Proteus mirabilis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2021. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9601-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9601-8_11
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