Mutagenesis of the paracrystalline surface protein array of Aeromonas salmonicida by endogenous insertion elements

The tetragonal paracrystalline surface protein array (A-layer) of the fish pathogenic bacterium Aeromonas salmonicida is a virulence factor and bacteria which are unable to produce A-layer are attenuated in their ability to kill fish. Ten independent mutants of Aeromonas salmonicida which were unable to produce A-layer were isolated by growth at 30°C. These mutants displayed either reduced synthesis of the A-layer subunit, synthesis of a truncated subunit, or complete loss of the ability to produce the subunit protein. Restriction mapping and analysis by polymerase chain reaction showed that the mutations had resulted from insertion of two different insertion sequence (IS) elements into different sites in the A-layer subunit gene (vapA) and its promoter. Sequence comparisons indicated that ISAS1 is unique among reported IS elements. It is 1223 bp long with imperfect terminal inverted repeats of 22 bp and insertion resulted in a duplicated 8 bp target sequence in vapA. ISAS1 expressed a 42,000 molecular weight (Mr) protein in mini-cells. ISAS2 was 1084 bp long, expressed proteins of Mr 38,000 and 39,000 in vitro, had imperfect 29 bp terminal inverted repeats and had duplicated a 3 bp target sequence. Sequence comparisons indicated that ISAS2 was also unique to A. salmonicida; however, the proteins encoded by ISAS2 showed strong homology to the putative transposases encoded by the IS30 family of IS elements. Southern analyses showed that both ISAS1 and ISAS2 were restricted to A. salmonicida strains A449 and A450 where they were present in low copy number. The ability of these two IS elements to mutate the ability of A. salmonicida to produce its paracrystalline surface array provides a novel method for the attenuation of virulence.