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Biological analysis of the deletion mutants of Staphylococcal enterotoxin C2

  • Applied Genetics and Molecular Biotechnology
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Abstract

To investigate the functional domains involved in the biological activity of staphylococcal enterotoxin (SEC2), a series of SEC2 mutants were constructed. Deletion of the last 77 amino acids at the C-terminus of SEC2 did not affect its native superantigen and fever activities, and further removal of the C-terminal residues reduced SEC2 activities significantly. On the other hand, the mutants lacking 18 or more N-terminal residues severely impaired superantigen activity. These data indicated that the functional regions for the biological activities of SEC2 were confined to N-terminal domain, further implied that the proper three-dimensional structure of SEC2 is not needed for its biological activities. Our results deliver valuable information that it is possible to design new SEC2 immunotherapeutic agents which have the superantigen activity and low molecular weight for permeability.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grant from the Scientific Innovation Project of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the CAS (06LYQYC001) and the PhD programs initializing foundation of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the CAS (08SBS111S3).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaogang Wang, Huiwen Zhang, Mingkai Xu & Chenggang Zhang

  2. Tianjin Institute of Pharmaceutical Research, Tianjin, 300193, People’s Republic of China

    Changxiao Liu

  3. Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaogang Wang

  4. Microbiology Group, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Mingkai Xu

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  1. Xiaogang Wang
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  2. Huiwen Zhang
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Correspondence to Mingkai Xu.

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Wang, X., Zhang, H., Xu, M. et al. Biological analysis of the deletion mutants of Staphylococcal enterotoxin C2. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 83, 1077–1084 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-009-1938-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-009-1938-3

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