melitensis (type IV secretion system, flagella, OMPs, exopolysaccharide) and that mutations in this regulator lead to clumping in liquid R788 culture (Uzureau et al., 2007). Here, we show that the overexpression of the newly described AHL-acylase aiiD of Brucella (J. Lemaire, unpublished data) leads to a similar or an even stronger clumping phenotype. This observation is not unexpected because both types of strains are unresponsive to AHLs:

the vjbR-defective strains [both the vjbR(D82A) and the vjbR(Δ1-180) alleles] are unable to bind C12-HSL (Uzureau et al., 2007) and the aiiD-overexpressing strain degrades all the synthesized C12-HSL, leading to constantly unbound VjbR regulators. These related strains produce at least one exopolysaccharide

with d-mannose or d-glucose residues as demonstrated by the ConA-FITC labeling of the clumps (Uzureau et al., 2007 and Fig. 1). Exopolysaccharide production and aggregate formation is a classical feature in several Alphaproteobacteria and Brucella does not seem to be an exception to the rule. For example, the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been shown to produce an exopolysaccharide called succinoglycan (Stredansky & Conti, 1999) and Sinorhizobium meliloti has been reported this website to produce succinoglycan and galactoglucan, both required for its full virulence (Leigh et al., 1985; Glazebrook & Walker, 1989). The B. melitensis exopolysaccharide we have characterized in this paper is mainly composed of a combination of 2- and/or 6- substituted mannosyl residues with minor amounts of glucose, glucosamine and maybe galactose that build up chains of around 100 sugars. Mannose seems to be a privileged sugar in Brucella

Ureohydrolase extracellular oligo- or polysaccharidic structures as the core of the lipopolysaccharide contains mannose (Velasco et al., 2000) and the O-chain of the lipopolysaccharide is a homo-polymer of 4,6-dideoxy-4-formamido-d-mannose (N-formylperosamine) (Perry & Bundle, 1990). In B. melitensis biovar 1, the N-formylperosamine homopolymer is composed of repeating blocks of five sugar residues, four α-(12)-linked and one α-(13)-linked (Aragón et al., 1996). Biofilms of several bacterial species have been shown previously to contain eDNA (Whitchurch et al., 2002; Vilain et al., 2009). DNAse treatment of B. melitensis clumps led to their efficient dissociation, demonstrating the involvement of eDNA in the aggregates. The origin of the eDNA remains to be determined. eDNA can result from a lysis of a subpopulation of cells in the aggregate (Allesen-Holm et al., 2006) or can be actively released from living cells (Dillard & Seifert, 2001; Renelli et al., 2004). Brucella melitensis exopolysaccharide is probably not the only surface structure involved in clumping because the outer membrane composition showed strong differences between the wild-type and the MG210 clumping strains. The production of Omp25 and Omp31 is increased in the later strain.