Fig 1.
B. cereus G9421 virulence plasmids harbor two protective antigen orthologues. (A) B. cereus G9241 virulence plasmid pBCXO1 harbors anthrax toxin genes pagA1 (protective antigen, PA1), lef1 (lethal factor), and cya (edema factor). The B. cereus G9241 virulence plasmid pBC218 harbors genes for expression of BPS capsule as well as pagA2 (protective antigen, PA2) and lef2 (encoding the ADP-ribosylase CerADPr) (28). (B) The amino acid identities between Bacillus anthracis PA and B. cereus PA1 and PA2 were revealed with BLAST searches (37) and are listed for each of its four domains (D1 to D4) (60). (C) The extracellular medium of B. cereus G9241 wild type or its ΔpagA1 and ΔpagA2 mutants was precipitated with TCA and subjected to immunoblotting with PA-specific antibodies. (D) Purified GST hybrids with the N-terminal end of the D1 or D4 domain of PA2 or the D4 domain of PA were subjected to immunoblotting with PA- or GST-specific antibodies. In the right panel, the concentrations of GST-D1PA2 and GST-D4PA2 were 500-fold higher than that of GST-D4PA.