Functional analysis of the YopE GTPase-activating protein (GAP) activity of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

YopE of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis inactivates three members of the small RhoGTPase family (RhoA, Rac1 and Cdc42) in vitro and mutation of a critical arginine abolishes both in vitro GTPase-activating protein (GAP) activity and cytotoxicity towards HeLa cells, and renders the pathogen avirulent in a mouse model. To understand the functional role of YopE, in vivo studies of the GAP activity in infected eukaryotic cells were conducted. Wild-type YopE inactivated Rac1 as early as 5 min after infection whereas RhoA was downregulated about 30 min after infection. No effect of YopE was found on the activation state of Cdc42 in Yersinia-infected cells. Single-amino-acid substitution mutants of YopE revealed two different phenotypes: (i) mutants with significantly lowered in vivo GAP activity towards RhoA and Rac1 displaying full virulence in mice, and (ii) avirulent mutants with wild-type in vivo GAP activity towards RhoA and Rac1. Our results show that Cdc42 is not an in vivo target for YopE and that YopE interacts preferentially with Rac1, and to a lesser extent with RhoA, during in vivo conditions. Surprisingly, we present results suggesting that these interactions are not a prerequisite to establish infection in mice. Finally, we show that avirulent yopE mutants translocate YopE in about sixfold higher amount compared with wild type. This raises the question whether YopE's primary function is to sense the level of translocation rather than being directly involved in downregulation of the host defence.