The general secretion pathway (GSP) of Vibrio cholerae is required for secretion of proteins including chitinase, enterotoxin, and protease through the outer membrane. In this study, we report the cloning and sequencing of a DNA fragment from V. cholerae, containing 12 open reading frames, epsC to -N, which are similar to GSP genes of Aeromonas, Erwinia, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, and Xanthomonas spp. In addition to the two previously described genes, epsE and epsM (M. Sandkvist, V. Morales, and M. Bagdasarian, Gene 123: 81-86, 1993; L. J. Overbye, M. Sandkvist, and M. Bagdasarian, Gene 132:101-106, 1993), it is shown here that epsC, epsF, epsG, and epsL also encode proteins essential for GSP function. Mutations in the eps genes result in aberrant outer membrane protein profiles, which indicates that the GSP, or at least some of its components, is required not only for secretion of soluble proteins but also for proper outer membrane assembly. Several of the Eps proteins have been identified by use of the T7 polymerase-promoter system in Escherichia coli. One of them, a pilin-like protein, EpsG, was analyzed also in V. cholerae and found to migrate as two bands on polyacrylamide gels, suggesting that in this organism it might be processed or otherwise modified by a prepilin peptidase. We believe that TcpJ prepilin peptidase, which processes the subunit of the toxin-coregulated pilus, TcpA, is not involved in this event. This is supported by the observations that apparent processing of EpsG occurs in a tcpJ mutant of V. cholerae and that, when coexpressed in E. coli, TcpJ cannot process EpsG although the PilD peptidase from Neisseria gonorrhoeae can.In Vibrio cholerae, the general secretion pathway (GSP) is required for extracellular secretion of several proteins including chitinase, cholera toxin (CT), and protease (51, 60). This pathway likely plays a significant role in the survival of Vibrio in different environments as well as in its pathogenicity. For instance, secreted chitinase and protease may assist in the detachment of V. cholerae from chitinous waterborne particles and from host epithelial cells, respectively, thus facilitating dissemination (14, 71). CT is the major component responsible for inducing the diarrheal disease cholera and is therefore also involved in the dissemination process (for a review, see reference 30).Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) is very similar to CT in its structure, biochemical function, and ability to translocate across the outer membrane of V. cholerae (66). It is a multimeric protein which consists of a single A subunit and a pentamer of identical B-subunit polypeptides (18,64,65). Its secretion from V. cholerae proceeds in two steps, similar to the secretion of CT. The first step is translocation of the individual subunit polypeptides across the cytoplasmic membrane. This is mediated by a pathway which is presumably similar to the sec system of E. coli (63). During this step, the signal peptides of the A and B precursor polypeptides are cleaved off (8,25,52) a...

The general secretion pathway of gram-negative bacteria is responsible for extracellular secretion of a number of different proteins, including proteases and toxins. This pathway supports secretion of proteins across the cell envelope in two distinct steps, in which the second step, involving translocation through the outer membrane, is assisted by at least 13 different gene products. Two of these components, the cytoplasmic membrane proteins EpsL and EpsM ofVibrio cholerae, have been purified and characterized. Based on gel filtration analysis, both purified EpsM(His)6 and wild-type EpsL present in anEscherichia coli Triton X-100 extract are dimeric proteins. EpsL and EpsM were also found to interact directly and form a Triton X-100 stable complex that could be precipitated with either anti-EpsL or anti-EpsM antibodies. In addition, when the L and M proteins were coexpressed in E. coli, they formed a stable complex and protected each other from proteolytic degradation, indicating that these two proteins interact in vivo and that no other Eps protein is required for their association. Since EpsL is predicted to contain a large cytoplasmic domain, while EpsM is predominantly exposed on the periplasmic side, we speculate that these components might be part of a structure that is involved in bridging the inner and outer membranes. Furthermore, since EpsL has previously been shown to interact with the autophosphorylating cytoplasmic membrane protein EpsE, we hypothesize that this trimolecular complex might be involved in regulating the opening and closing of the secretion pore and/or transducing energy to the site of outer membrane translocation.