Construction of a recombinant Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain with rmp gene deletion and study on the bactericidal activities of its antibodies / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the role of the outer membrane protein Rmp of Neisseria gonor-rhoeae strain in immunosuppression and the strategy of eliminating it .Methods The rmp gene of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain was amplified by PCR and inserted into pMD 19-T vector .The recombinant vector pMD 19△rmp∷Kan containing Kan and the 5′-and 3′-flanking regions of rmp (△rmp∷Kan) was constructed by replacing 200 nucleotide residues of pMD 19-rmp with kanamycin resistance gene Kan and transformed into Neisseria gonorrhoeae WHO-A strain.PCR and Western blot assay were used to screen and identify the re-combinant mutant strains that could not express Rmp .Mice were immunized with mutant strains and bacteri-cidal activities of the immune sera were detected by antibody-mediated complement-dependent cytotoxicity assay.Results The mutant strains that could not encode Rmp were successfully constructed .Antibodies in-duced by mutant strains showed stronger bactericidal activity against Neisseria gonorrhoeae in comparison with those induced by wild strains .Conclusion The recombinant Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain with rmp gene de-letion might eliminate the immunosuppressive effects of Rmp expressed in wild gonococcal strains , which provides a reference for further development of novel live attenuated whole-cell vaccines of Neisseria gonor-rhoeae.