Séminaire de l'IFR « Institut de Microbiologie de la Méditerranée »

- Séminaire de l'IFR « Institut de Microbiologie de la Méditerranée »

Conférence de Peter van ULSEN (Department of Molecular Microbiology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam), le vendredi 13 février 2009 à 11 h 30, IBSM (salle de conférences Jacques Senez), Campus Joseph Aiguier, Bt IM, CNRS, Marseille : « The secretion and function of autotransporter and two partner secretion pathways in the human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis ».

Résumé :
The human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis causes meningitidis (méningite) and sepsis (septicémie) and is a leading cause of infectious disease in very young children. Genomic analyses have revealed that the Autotransporter (AT) and Two-partner Secretion (TPS) pathways, both classified as Type V, are the pathogens major secretion pathways that may contribute to infection.
We focus on two aspects of the pathways :
- 1) How are the proteins transported over the bacterial cell envelope ?
- 2) How do the secreted proteins contribute to virulence and can they be used as potential vaccine constituents ? Recent advances in the structural biology of autotransporters have challenged existing secretion models. We investigated the role of the signal peptide in the periplasmic transit of ATs. Furthermore, we recently discovered new functions for the neisserial ATs. Neisserial TPS Systems have attracted much less attention, but recent work on their secretion and function identified novel features of this secretion pathway.

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