Interaction Between VirB5 of Brucella Type IV Secretion System (TFSS) and Ferritin Heavy Polypeptide 1 (FTH1) in Murine Macrophage

摘要

TFSS is an important virulence factor of Brucella, organized as one operon containing 12 different across the cell wall bacterial proteins among which VirB5 regulates the host phagocytosis of Brucella and the transportation of Brucella in the host cells. This study has constructed cDNA library from Brucella melitensis 16M-infected murine macrophage Raw264.7, identified and confirmed the interaction between Brucella VirB5 and FTH1 of RAW264.7 using yeast two-hybrid and Co-Immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) technologies. Subsequently, the morphological changes and the expression of apoptosis-related genes in Brucella-infected RAW264.7 cells have been investigated with Electron Microscope (EM) and real-time quantitative RT-PCR, respectively. The present study has demonstrated that VirB5 and FTH1 play important roles in intracellular parasitism of Brucella and inhibition of FHT1 expression accelerates the apoptosis of macrophage.