Abstract
Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) is a severe, newly emergent penaeid shrimp disease caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus that has already led to tremendous losses in the cultured shrimp industry. Until now, its disease-causing mechanism has remained unclear. Here we show that an AHPND-causing strain of V. parahaemolyticus contains a 70-kbp plasmid (pVA1) with a postsegregational killing system, and that the ability to cause disease is abolished by the natural absence or experimental deletion of the plasmid-encoded homologs of the Photorhabdus insect-related (Pir) toxins PirA and PirB. We determined the crystal structure of the V. parahaemolyticus PirA and PirB (PirAvp and PirBvp) proteins and found that the overall structural topology of PirAvp/PirBvp is very similar to that of the Bacillus Cry insecticidal toxin-like proteins, despite the low sequence identity (vp heterodimer might emulate the functional domains of the Cry protein, and in particular its poreforming activity. The gene organization of pVA1 further suggested that pirABvp may be lost or acquired by horizontal gene transfer via transposition or homologous recombination.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 10798-10803 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 112 |
Issue number | 34 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 25 2015 |
Keywords
- AHPND
- Pir toxin
- Shrimp
- Vibrio parahaemolyticus
- Virulence plasmid
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General
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3X0U : Crystal structure of PirB
Wang, H.-C. (Contributor), Wang, H.-C. (Contributor), Wang, A.H.-J. (Contributor), Lo, C.-F. (Contributor) & Ko, T.-P. (Contributor), RCSB-PDB, 2015
DOI: 10.2210/pdb3x0u/pdb, https://www.rcsb.org/structure/3X0U
Dataset
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3X0T : Crystal structure of PirA
Wang, H.-C. (Contributor), Wang, H.-C. (Contributor), Wang, A.H.-J. (Contributor), Lo, C.-F. (Contributor) & Ko, T.-P. (Contributor), RCSB-PDB, 2015
DOI: 10.2210/pdb3x0t/pdb, https://www.rcsb.org/structure/3X0T
Dataset