Putative lipoproteins of Streptococcus suis type 2 identified by bioinformatic genome analysis

Abstract:

[Objective] To identify putative lipoproteins of Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (SS2). [Methods] First, I used the ScanProsite feature of Prosite and the website Database Of bacterial LipOProteins(DOLOP) to identify putative lipopro-teins in the recently published genome of SS2 strains 05ZYH33, then validated the identified putative lipoproteins to ex-clude the false positive by a ‘majority vote’ approach following analysis with standard tools for signal peptide verification. Finally, putative functions were attributed to individual lipoproteins by reference to the identification of conserved do-mains of InterPro. Homologous proteins were identified by unfiltered BlastP homology searches (including conserved domain detection). [Results] Among the 38 identified putative lipoproteins, 34 were validated as lipoprotein and 4 as false positive lipoproteins. The largest functional category (16/34, 44%) of lipoproteins was that predicted to comprise of sub-strate binding proteins of ATP-binding cassette transport systems. Other roles included lipoproteins that participated in adhesion (YP_001197698 and YP_001198710), protein export and folding. [Conclusion] Lipoproteins contributed to the physiology of SS2 and influenced its virulence.