In the case of S. flexneri vesicles, for instance, vesicle lumenal content was found in the host cell cytosol after selleck inhibitor vesicles were phagocytosed to a non-acidified

compartment by Henle 407 epithelial cells [36]. We show that P. aeruginosa vesicle-associated intracellular fluorescence is concentrated to bright puncta and do not encounter an acidified compartment, since vesicle-associated FITC fluorescence (which is pH sensitive) is not quenched, even in long incubations Saracatinib datasheet (Fig 1). Notably, a significant amount of vesicle-associated fluorescence colocalized with the integral ER membrane protein TRAPα, even after a relatively brief incubation time. Transferrin and CT eventually route to the ER, and indeed, those pools of Transferrin and CT that had reached the ER colocalized with the vesicle fluorescence. None of the currently identified P. aeruginosa vesicle proteins have an ER retention sequence to direct the trafficking of these bacterial factors to the ER (such as the case for LT which has RDEL at its C-terminus). Since intracellular trafficking

of S470APKO5 vesicles was not noticeably different from S470 vesicles (data not shown), internalized vesicle trafficking appears to be PaAP-independent. In all, many questions remain regarding the trafficking of P. aeruginosa vesicle membrane and lumenal content learn more after endocytosis, and this area deserves further exploration. In some cases the factor on bacterial vesicles responsible for host cell binding has been identified Etofibrate as a virulence factor [9]. For example, the heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) is bound to the surface of ETEC vesicles, and vesicle-bound LT mediates vesicle binding to cultured eukaryotic cells via the LT receptor, ganglioside GM1 [11, 14]. In contrast, leukotoxin transported in A. actinomycetemcomitans vesicles was not responsible for vesicle association with HL60 cells [13]. We have found that

PaAP also is located on the vesicle surface (preliminary data), and that host cell association correlated with PaAP levels on the vesicles. Strains overexpressing PaAP or deleted in PaAP, respectively, produced vesicles that associated to a greater or lesser extent than vesicles from the corresponding isogenic parent strains. A direct correlation between vesicle association and PaAP levels also held for strains naturally expressing PaAP at different levels. PaAP expression is highly regulated and typically does not occur until stationary phase [37–40]. This was true for our cultures of PAO1, and as a result PaAP was nearly absent from PAO1 vesicles purified from late log-phase cultures (see Fig 6 and [Additional file 2, Part A]). In contrast, strain S470 begins to express PaAP in late log phase, therefore PaAP was enriched in the late log-phase S470 vesicles (see Fig 6 and [Additional file 2, Part A]). Correspondingly, PAO1 vesicles associated 3–4 fold less than S470 vesicles (Fig 1).