Gene 1994,145(1):69–73.PubMedCrossRef 63. Baumbach J, Wittkop T, Kleindt CK, Tauch A: Integrated analysis and reconstruction of microbial transcriptional gene regulatory networks using CoryneRegNet. Nat Protoc 2009,4(6):992–1005.PubMedCrossRef 64. Munch R, Hiller K, Barg H, Heldt D, Linz S, Wingender E, Jahn D: PRODORIC: prokaryotic database of gene regulation. Nucleic Acids Res 2003,31(1):266–269.PubMedCrossRef Authors’ contributions OK and DM purified and characterized the enzyme, OK and KCS carried out the transcriptional studies, OK, KCS and JWY constructed the recombinant strains and JWY performed the growth experiments and determined the enzyme activities. TO supervised LY2603618 nmr the enzymatic analyses, participated

in click here the interpretation of the data and critical revision of the manuscript. VFW supervised the experiments and was responsible for the draft and final version of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Streptococcus pyogenes causes heterogeneous disease types, including pharyngitis, cellulitis, and bacteremia [1]. The pathogenesis of S. pyogenes infection involves an intriguing host-pathogen interplay

in which the biological activity of several bacterial virulence products are modulated by host factors [2]. The details of the molecular selleck interaction between the bacterium and the host, as well as their influences on the prognosis and severity of streptococcal infection, remain poorly understood. S. pyogenes has been reported to produce a number of surface-associated and extracellular products contributing to the pathogenesis. In particular, several cell surface proteins have been documented as being involved in adherence and colonization during infection Thymidylate synthase [3]. Many cell surface proteins of gram-positive bacteria share similar structural characteristics that include a variable amino terminus, a central region with repeated

sequences, and a cell-associated region with a LPXTGX cell wall anchored motif [4]. A new S. pyogenes cell surface protein family, streptococcal collagen-like (Scl) protein, has been identified recently [5–10]. Scl1 (SclA) and Scl2 (SclB), two Scl protein family members, share a similar structure motif, including the LPXTGX motif and a central region composed of variable numbers of Gly-X-X (GXX) collagen-like motifs. Collagen exhibits a triple-helical, elongated protein structure that is the structural component of the extracellular matrix in multicellular organisms. As eukaryotic cells are known to bind to collagen through receptors expressed on cell surfaces [11], it is reasonable to speculate that the Scl protein family may participate in the colonization/binding of S. pyogenes to receptors on the host cell. Although the potential role of Scl1 in adhesion has been demonstrated by disrupting the scl1 gene in different S. pyogenes strains [5, 6], the conclusions may be affected by the use of different S.