Mutational analysis of the C-terminal anchoring domains of<i>Streptococcus mutans</i>P1 antigen: Role of the LPXTGX motif in P1 association with the cell wall
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The salivary agglutinin-interacting adhesin P1 of Streptococcus mutans is anchored to the cell wall via the carboxy (C) terminus, which contains a wall-associated domain, a conserved LPXTGX motif, a hydrophobic domain, and a charged tail. To further investigate the role of the C-terminal anchoring regions in cell wall sorting and anchoring, mutational analysis was performed on P1 in this study. Three truncated P1 mutants and seven site-directed mutants were generated by a polymerase chain reaction-based technique. The mutated P1 genes were returned to the P1-negative S. mutans SM3352 for expression and localization studies by ELISA and Western immunoblotting. The results showed that P1 mutants with deletion of the hydrophobic domain and charged tail, or deletion of the charged tail alone resulted in the secretion of P1 to the culture medium. Results from cellular fractionation experiments with the truncated mutants showed that P1 was not trapped in the membrane or cytoplasm. The site-directed mutants showed normal distribution of P1 to the cell surface as compared to the wild-type. However, when cell walls prepared from the site-directed mutants were boiled with SDS, P1 could be removed readily from the mutants with Thr residue in the LPNTGV motif, altered to either Ser (T1531S) or Phe (T1531F); the mutant with Thr and Gly residues altered to two Phe residues (TG1531-1532FF), and the LPNTGV-deleted mutant (LPNTGV-). In contrast, the wild-type P1 and the other three site-directed P1 mutants (P1529V, N1530I, and G1532F) could not be removed by boiling SDS. When the cell wall P1s from the wild-type, mutants P1529V, N1530I, and G1532F were reacted with an antibody directed against the hydrophobic domain and charged tail, no reaction was detected. However, P1s from mutants T1531S, T1531F, TG1531-1532FF, and LPNTGV-were recognized by the antibody, indicating that the inability of these mutated P1s to firmly link to the cell wall was the result of failure in proteolytic cleavage of the hydrophobic domain and charged tail. In summary, the results suggest that the charged tail plays a decisive role in sorting P1 to the cell surface, while the LPXTGX motif determines the nature of P1-cell wall association. The Thr residue of the LPXTGX motif is required for enzymatic processing to link P1 to the cell wall, presumably via a covalent bond.Key words: antigen P1, cell wall proteins, Streptococcus mutans, protein anchoring, site-directed mutagenesis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".