The Escherichia coli heat-stable enterotoxin II (STII) is a typical extracellular toxin consisting of 48 amino acid residues, of which 4 are cysteine. There are two disulfide bonds, one between Cys-10 and Cys-48 and one between Cys-21 and Cys-36. We examined the involvement of DsbA in the formation of the disulfide bonds of STII and the role of each in the secretion of STII. A dsbA mutant was transformed with a plasmid harboring the STII gene, and STII was not detected either in the cells or in the culture supernatant. Reducing the level of STII brought about the dsbA mutation restored by introducing the wild-type dsbA gene into the mutant strain. These results showed that DsbA is involved in forming the disulfide bonds of STII and that STII without these disulfide bonds is degraded during secretion. We substituted these four cysteine residues in vivo by oligonucleotide-directed site-specific mutagenesis. The amino acid sequence of the purified STII(C48S) and pulse-chase studies revealed that two intermolecular disulfide bonds must be formed to be efficiently secreted and that cleavage between amino acid residues 14 and 15 is probably the first step in the proteolytic degradation of STII.Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains produce two heatstable enterotoxins (STs), which cause intestinal secretion and diarrhea (5). One is termed STI (also referred to as STa), and the other is termed STII (also referred to as STb). STI is an 18-or 19-amino-acid acidic peptide containing three disulfide bonds and a protease-stable peptide (1,19,25). STI is active in the suckling-mouse assay. On the other hand, STII was reported to be active only in the weaned-pig ligated intestinal loop assay (26). Because of the lack of a convenient assay, STII was not purified for some time after its detection. We and Whipp found that STII is positive in the mouse intestinal loop assay in the presence of a protease inhibitor (9,11,27). We purified STII and confirmed that the mature form released into culture supernatant is composed of 48 amino acid residues that contain disulfide bonds between Cys-10 and Cys-48 and between Cys-21 and Cys-36 (9).The gene encoding STII (estII) has been isolated and the DNA sequence has been determined (15, 21). The sequence indicates that STII is synthesized as a 71-amino-acid-residue peptide. The 48-amino-acid sequence that we determined is identical to that of the 48 carboxy-terminal amino acids of STII predicted from the DNA sequence. This means that STII is synthesized as a precursor consisting of 71 amino acid residues and that the 23 amino-terminal amino acids consist of a conventional leader peptide which is cleaved by signal peptidase after the STII mRNA translation is initiated. This cleavage allows the resulting peptide to translocate through the inner membrane to the periplasm (13). To be converted into active STII, the intramolecular disulfide bonds must be correctly formed. However, the pathway in which the disulfide bond is formed has not been elucidated.A periplasmic protein, termed DsbA, which...