In contrast to Sa-SrtA, the activities of Sp-SrtA and Ss-SrtA in this study were not dependent on Ca2+ [12]. substrate-binding cleft. Site-directed mutagenesis identified H126, C192 and R200 as the key residues of Ss-SrtA active site. To discover potential inhibitors, the percent inhibition of sortase activity by natural products was measured. Among these selected natural products, acteoside, isoquercitrin and Brexpiprazole baicalin were discovered as novel SrtA inhibitors, with IC50 values of 36.3 1.3 M, 100.0 1.3 M and 85.4 1.5 M, respectively. The inhibitory effects of these three natural products were further confirmed on endogenous Sa-SrtA. Using a previously established model with a fluorescent-labeled Sa-SrtA substrate, acteoside, isoquercitrin, and baicalin showed 86%, 28% and 45% inhibition on endogenous Sa-SrtA activity, respectively. Overall, these findings shed new light on enzymatic properties, Ca2+-impartial catalytic mechanism and potential inhibitors of Ss-SrtA. Introduction is one of the most important bacterial pathogens in pigs, causing major economic losses to the swine industry worldwide [1]. It is also an emerging zoonotic agent of human meningitis and streptococcal toxic shock-like syndrome Brexpiprazole [1]. is receiving growing attention not only for its role in increasingly reported severe infections in humans but also for its increasing resistance to antibiotics. High rates of resistance to tetracyclines, macrolides, -lactams, aminoglycosides, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, chloramphenicol, and fluoroquinolones have been frequently reported in pig isolates worldwide [2, 3]. Vaccines are being developed to prevent infection, such as whole-cell bacterins, autogenous bacterins in piglets, and live-attenuated vaccines. However, their protection effects are thus far unsatisfactory [4], stressing the urgent need for the study of novel therapeutic strategies against contamination. Gram-positive pathogenic bacteria display surface Brexpiprazole proteins that play crucial functions in adhesion and invasion of host cells or evasion of host-immune responses [5]. Many of these proteins are covalently linked to the cell wall peptidoglycan through C-terminal sorting signal with the conserved LPXTG motif [6]. Sortase A (SrtA) is usually a membrane-associated transpeptidase responsible for the anchoring of these surface proteins to the Brexpiprazole cell wall by recognition of the LPXTG motif [6]. Therefore, SrtA plays a critical role in Gram-positive bacterial pathogenesis and is considered a promising anti-infective target. The other important feature of SrtA is usually that it is not required for bacterial growth, thus its inhibitors will not exert selective pressures to promote the development of antibiotic resistance [7]. Furthermore, SrtA resides around the extracellular side of the cell membrane and it increases the chance to interact with inhibitors [8]. Therefore, SrtA is an attractive drug target for the development of anti-infective drugs. So far, detailed structural studies have been limited to SrtAs from (Sa-SrtA) [9C11] and (Sp-SrtA) [12]. These sortases share a similar 8 stranded -barrel-fold structure despite of sequence diversity. The Cys, His and Arg residues clustered at the center of a long cleft are identified as the key catalytic residues for these sortases [13]. The main enzymatic difference Rabbit Polyclonal to Retinoic Acid Receptor beta between Sa-SrtA and Sp-SrtA is their dependence on Ca2+. It has been found that Ca2+ stimulates the activity of Sa-SrtA by 8-fold, whereas the activity of Sp-SrtA is not Brexpiprazole promoted by Ca2+ [12]. This has been explained by the different residue arrangements of the 3/4 loop and 6/7 loop in SrtA structures [11, 12]. Over the past decade, useful investigations have been performed to identify inhibitors of Sa-SrtA to combat the alarming increase in antimicrobial resistance, and promising inhibitor compounds have been discovered [13]. The results show that natural products are good resource for SrtA inhibitors. In the case of fails to display surface proteins and is defective in the establishment of infections [14, 15]. Genome sequencing reveals that encodes 33 surface proteins with the LPXTG sorting signal, which fulfill diverse functions during infection. Therefore, SrtA plays a critical role in pathogenesis, and SrtA inhibitors may consequently be promising candidates for the treatment and/or prevention of infections. In this study, we biochemically characterized Ss-SrtA. By screening 11 natural products, new promising Ss-SrtA inhibitors were discovered. Materials and methods Bacterial strains, plasmids and growth conditions The.