Jw. St Geme et D. Cutter, The Haemophilus influenzae Hia adhesin is an autotransporter protein that remains uncleaved at the C terminus and fully cell associated, J BACT, 182(21), 2000, pp. 6005-6013
Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae is a gram-negative commensal organism th
at is commonly associated with localized respiratory tract disease. The pat
hogenesis of disease begins with colonization of the nasopharynx, a process
that likely depends on bacterial adherence to respiratory epithelial cells
. Hia is the major adhesin expressed by a subset of nontypeable H. influenz
ae strains and promotes efficient adherence to a variety of human epithelia
l cell lines. Based on previous work, Hia is transported to the surface of
Escherichia coli transformants and is capable of mediating E. coli adherenc
e without the assistance of other H. influenzae proteins. In the present st
udy, we examined the mechanism of Hia secretion. PhoA fusions, deletional m
utagenesis, and N-terminal amino acid sequencing established that the signa
l for Hia export from the cytoplasm resides in the first 49 amino acids, in
cluding a 24-amino-acid stretch with striking similarity to the N terminus
of a number of proteins belonging to the autotransporter family. Immunoelec
tron microscopy demonstrated that the Hia internal region defined by amino
acids 221 to 779 is exposed on the bacterial surface. Secondary-structure a
nalysis predicted that the C terminus of Hia forms a beta-barrel with a cen
tral hydrophilic channel, and site-specific mutagenesis and fusion protein
analysis demonstrated that the C terminus targets Hia to the outer membrane
and functions as an outer membrane translocator, analogous to observations
with autotransporter proteins. In contrast to typical autotransporter prot
eins, Hia undergoes no cleavage between the internal and C-terminal domains
and remains fully cell associated. Together, these results suggest that Hi
a is the prototype of an important subfamily of autotransporter proteins.