Skp has been shown to interact with early OMP folding intermediates at the

periplasmic side of the inner membrane [11, 12] and to keep immature OMPs in a soluble state [13, 14]. DegP on the other hand, was found to bind to and stabilize folded OMP monomers [15] and thus appears to act downstream of Skp in the proposed Skp/DegP pathway for OMP maturation. Conflicting results have been reported regarding the Sirtuin inhibitor involvement of the periplasmic PpiD protein in the biogenesis of OMPs. PpiD is anchored to the inner membrane by an N-terminal transmembrane segment and consists of a single parvulin domain flanked by large N- and C-terminal protein regions. The N-terminal region shares sequence similarity with the N-terminal region of SurA, which comprises the major part of the SurA chaperone module ([16–19]; see additional file 1). Several previous findings suggested that PpiD and SurA have overlapping functions in OMP biogenesis www.selleckchem.com/products/bgj398-nvp-bgj398.html [18]. First, a ppiD mutant was documented to have phenotypes that are similar to those of a surA mutant and are suppressed by multicopy

surA. Second, the simultaneous deletion of ppiD and surA was reported to cause lethality. More recently however, surA ppiD find more mutants were shown to display no visible growth defects [20]. Finally and most importantly, ppiD was isolated as a multicopy suppressor in a surA mutant. Remarkably however, whereas the surA phenotypes result from loss of chaperone function [2], a high PPIase activity of PpiD was identified as the complementing biochemical activity [18]. Most recently, this result was disputed by the finding that the isolated parvulin domain of PpiD is devoid of detectable PPIase activity [19]. Here, we analyzed the functional interplay of PpiD with SurA, Skp, and DegP to define its role in the all E. coli periplasm. Results Re-examination of PpiD function in the biogenesis of OMPs To resurvey the role of PpiD in OMP maturation we analyzed the physiological consequences of both inactivation and overexpression of ppiD in wild-type cells

and in the surA and skp mutants, respectively, using phenotypes known to report on OMP biogenesis and outer membrane integrity, such as σE activity, resistance of the cells to SDS/EDTA and to the antibiotic novobiocin, as well as the levels of major OMPs in their outer membranes. In contrast to previous work [18] we found that expression of multicopy ppiD from the IPTG-inducible P trc promoter does not suppress the surA mutant phenotypes but rather interferes with cell growth (data not shown). We therefore used a plasmid (pPpiD) that carries ppiD under control of its natural promoter, which is positively regulated by the classical cytoplasmic σ32-dependent heat-shock response and by the Cpx two-component system [18, 21]. Consistent with recent observations [20], the inactivation of ppiD in a surA strain did not cause lethality.