The membrane localization domain is required for intracellular localization and autoregulation of YopE in Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.

• Recent work has shown that a domain of YopE of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis ranging from amino acids 54 to 75 (R. Krall, Y. Zhang, and J. T. Barbieri, J. Biol. Chem. 279:2747-2753, 2004) is required for proper localization of YopE after ectopic expression in eukaryotic cells. This domain, called the membrane localization domain (MLD), has not been extensively studied in Yersinia. Therefore, an in cis MLD deletion mutant of YopE was created in Y. pseudotuberculosis. The mutant was found to secrete and translocate YopE at wild-type levels. However, the mutant was defective in the autoregulation of YopE expression after the infection of HeLa cells. Although the mutant translocated YopE at wild-type levels, it showed a delayed HeLa cell cytotoxicity. This delay was not caused by a change in GTPase activating protein (GAP) activity, since the mutant showed wild-type YopE GAP activity toward Rac1 and RhoA. The MLD mutant displayed a changed intracellular localization pattern of YopE in HeLa cells after infection, and the YopEDeltaMLD protein was found to be dispersed within the whole cell, including the nucleus. In contrast, wild-type YopE was found to localize to the perinuclear region of the cell and was not found in the nucleus. In addition, the yopEDeltaMLD mutant was avirulent. Our results suggest that YopE must target proteins other than RhoA and Rac1 and that the MLD is required for the proper targeting and hence virulence of YopE during infection. Our results raise the question whether YopE is a regulatory protein or a "true" virulence effector protein.

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