Proteus mirabilis fimbriae: N-terminal amino acid sequence of a major fimbrial subunit and nucleotide sequences of the genes from two strains

Proteus mirabilis, a common cause of urinary tract infection in hospitalized and catheterized patients, produces mannose-resistant/klebsiella-like (MR/K) and mannose-resistant/proteus-like (MR/P) hemagglutinins. The gene encoding the major structural subunit of a fimbria, possibly MR/K, was identified in two strains. A degenerate oligonucleotide probe based on the N terminus of the Proteus uroepithelial cell adhesin and antiserum raised against the denatured polypeptide were used to screen a cosmid gene bank of strain HU1069. A cosmid clone that reacted with the probe and antiserum was identified, and a fimbria-like open reading frame was determined by nucleotide sequencing. The predicted N-terminal amino acid sequence of the processed polypeptide, ENETPAPKVSSTKGEIQLKG (residues 23 to 42), did not match the uroepithelial cell adhesin N terminus but, rather, matched exactly the N-terminal amino acid sequence of a polypeptide with an apparent molecular size of 19.5 kDa isolated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of a fimbrial preparation from strain HI4320 expressing MR/K hemagglutinin. By using an oligonucleotide from the HU1069 open reading frame, the fimbrial gene was isolated and sequenced from a cosmid gene bank clone of strain HI4320. A 552-bp open reading frame predicts a 184-amino-acid polypeptide including a 22-amino-acid hydrophobic leader sequence. The unprocessed polypeptide is predicted to be 18,921 Da; the processed polypeptide is predicted to be 16,749 Da. The predicted amino acid sequence of the polypeptide encoded by the gene, designated pmfA, displayed 36% exact matches with the mannose-resistant fimbrial subunit encoded by smfA of Serratia marcescens but only 15% exact matches with the predicted sequence encoded by mrkA of Klebsiella pneumoniae.