This antigen presented a multiple banded pattern on immunoblots, wherefore, it was named multiple banded antigen (MBA). The same study tested only 4 patient sera in blocking experiments with monoclonal antibodies; therefore, it
is not possible to deduce the exact antigens for all serovars involved in the serotyping of the 14 serovars. Because of the suggested serovar-specific epitopes of the MBA, this protein has been used in attempts learn more to develop better serotyping techniques. However, the cross-reactivity between serovars still could not be eliminated. Comparing the 14 genomes of the ATCC type serovars enabled us to better understand why there is cross-reactivity when attempting to use anti-MBA antibodies for serotyping. This is due to the fact that all ATCC serovars have more than
two possible MBAs (when we include the genes in the locus that do not contain tandem repeats, as is the case of UUR13′s dominant mba gene), each expressed at different times, through a phase variable gene system. There was a limited number of unique variable domains, however, it was showed that one such unique variable domain unit was exchanged/acquired by horizontal gene transfer [26], suggesting that the mba NVP-HSP990 research buy locus is dynamic and can acquire or lose variable domains. Therefore the MBA genes are not suitable for a serotyping tool. Ureaplasmas have been shown to adhere to different eukaryotic cells although their adhesins have not been identified. Experiments done to gain a better understanding of the
adhesion properties of ureaplasma showed that cytadherence involves N- acetylneuraminic acid (NANA) as a ligand receptor molecule. The same study showed that ureaplasma adherence was significantly lower, but not inhibited by neuraminidase treatment, therefore, there are additional unidentified receptors that do not involve NANA [60]. Our comparative genome analysis of the 14 ATCC serovars showed that ureaplasmas have a great variety of genes coding for surface proteins and lipoproteins. Vorinostat Most of these genes could not be assigned a function, since they were orthologous to genes coding for proteins of unknown function or the predicted gene did not have an ortholog outside of the Ureaplasma genus. If these adherence related genes are of great importance to the organisms, our buy NCT-501 hypothesis suggests those genes will have a higher GC content than genes of lower importance. We used the %GC table together with signal peptide and transmembrane domain predictions to identify candidate genes that could be studied for adherence properties. A table of these genes can be found in the Additional file 3: Comparative paper COGs tables.xls, “Putative Surface Prot >27%GC” tab. The MBAs are part of the surface proteome of the ureaplasmas and have been shown to be recognized by the Toll-like receptors (TLR) and induce NF-κB production [52].