Vibrio parahaemolyticus, an important cause of contaminated fish–associated food poisoning, kills infected host cells within hours, using three sequential mechanisms: autophagy, cell rounding, and cell lysis. Broberg et al. now describe a molecular mechanism of a bacterial effector protein that facilitates cell lysis by disrupting a target involved in regulating membrane dynamics and the actin cytoskeleton. The Vibrio effector, VPA0450, causes target cell membrane blebbing. The protein acts as an inositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase and disrupts cytoskeletal binding sites on the inner surface of the plasma membrane of infected cells by hydrolyzing phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate.
C. A. Broberg, L. Zhang, H. Gonzalez, M. A. Laskowski-Arce, K. Orth, A Vibrio effector protein is an inositol phosphatase and disrupts host cell membrane integrity. Science 329, 1660–1662 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]
