Pathogenic Factors for infection in Vibrio vulnificus

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A Vibrio vulnificus mutant which lacks ability to infect ion-overloaded mice was isolated using a signature-tagged transposon. The 10 kb of the transposon-inserted region of the chromosome was cloned from the gene library and the nucleotide sequence around the insertion region was determined. The transposon-inserted site was found to have homology to Vibrio cholerae UDP-ga]actose-4-epimerase gene region. The region also had homologies to nucleoside-diphosphate sugar epimerase genes, which has an important role in sugar biosynthesis, of Vibrio vulnificus YJ016 and CMCP6 strains. These results suggested that the nock-out gene by the transposon in mutant 0204 may be the gene for biosynthesis of sugar-nucleotides which are precursors necessary for sugar chain formation of lipopolysaccharides. The other mutants are checked for the insertion sites of the transposons. We also carried out pulse-field electrophoresis for V.vulnificus strains using several genes of toxic and pathogenic factors. We found that some of the genes were hybridize to the 210kb NotI fragment, suggesting that some of the pathogenic factors constitute a pathogenic islands.