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. 2011 Jun 14;6(6):e20585. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0020585

Figure 2. Generation of vag8 mutants and description of the vag8 genetic locus and predicted protein architecture.

Figure 2

A Schematic of the vag8 locus that is knocked out in B. pertussis mutant BP338Vag8−. The 2748-bp coding sequence of vag8 is shown as an open arrow, with the hatched region indicating the internal vag8 fragment which was cloned into vector pEG7 to generate vector pEG7-Vag8. Dashed lines indicate vector sequence in the mutant strain. Solid lines indicate genomic sequence of BP338. vag8 is flanked by rRNA genes at the 5′ end and locus tag BP2314 at the 3′ end (solid arrows, not drawn to scale). The bar indicates the 810-bp PCR product (shown in B) that was indicative of the correct genomic integration of pEG7-Vag8 into the vag8 gene. C Architecture of the 95-kDaVag8 autotransporter protein. The predicted signal peptide and the passenger and translocator domains are indicated. The region spanning residues 610 and 644 comprise a predicted alpha-helical linker region present in all autotransporter proteins. Unlike many autotransporter proteins, Vag8 is not cleaved to separate its passenger domain from the translocator. The duplicated fragments of vag8 in BP338Vag8− are missing sequences encoding the translocator and signal peptide respectively.