Published in

American Society for Microbiology, mBio, 5(10), 2019

DOI: 10.1128/mbio.01951-19

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Type VII Secretion Substrates of Pathogenic Mycobacteria Are Processed by a Surface Protease

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Aspartic proteases are common in eukaryotes and retroviruses but are relatively rare among bacteria (N. D. Rawlings and A. Bateman, BMC Genomics 10:437, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-10-437 ). In contrast to eukaryotic aspartic proteases, bacterial aspartic proteases are generally located in the cytoplasm. We have identified a surface-associated mycobacterial aspartic protease, PecA, which cleaves itself and many other type VII secretion substrates of the PE_PGRS family. PecA is present in most pathogenic mycobacterial species, including M. tuberculosis . In addition, pathogenicity of M. marinum is reduced in the ΔpecA mutant, indicating that PecA contributes to virulence.