@phdthesis{Foertsch2012,
  author    = {F{\"o}rtsch, Christina},
  title     = {Pneumolysin: the state of pore-formation in context to cell trafficking and inflammatory responses of astrocytes},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-70892},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Pneumolysin, a protein toxin, represents one of the major virulence factors of Streptococcus pneumoniae. This pathogen causes bacterial meningitis with especially high disease rates in young children, elderly people and immunosuppressed patients. The protein toxin belongs to the family of cholesterol-dependent cytolysins, which require membrane cholesterol in order to bind and to be activated. Upon activation, monomers assemble in a circle and undergo conformational change. This conformational change leads to the formation of a pore, which eventually leads to cell lysis. This knowledge was obtained by studies that used a higher concentration compared to the concentration of pneumolysin found in the cerebrospinal fluid of meningitis patients. Thus, a much lower concentration of pneumolysin was used in this work in order to investigate effects of this toxin on primary mouse astrocytes. Previously, a small GTPase activation, possibly leading to cytoskeletal changes, was found in a human neuroblastoma cell line. This led to the hypothesis that pneumolysin can lead to similar cytoskeletal changes in primary cells. The aim of this work was to investigate and characterise the effects of pneumolysin on primary mouse astrocytes in terms of a possible pore formation, cellular trafficking and immunological responses. Firstly, the importance of pore-formation on cytoskeletal changes was to be investigated. In order to tackle this question, wild-type pneumolysin and two mutant variants were used. One variant was generated by exchanging one amino acid in the cholesterol recognising region, the second variant was generated by deleting two amino acids in a protein domain that is essential for oligomerisation. These variants should be incapable of forming a pore and were compared to the wild-type in terms of lytic capacities, membrane binding, membrane depolarisation, pore-formation in artificial membranes (planar lipid bilayer) and effects on the cytoskeleton. These investigations resulted in the finding that the pore-formation is required for inducing cell lysis, membrane depolarisation and cytoskeletal changes in astrocytes. The variants were not able to form a pore in planar lipid bilayer and did not cause cell lysis and membrane depolarisation. However, they bound to the cell membrane to the same extent as the wild-type toxin. Thus, the pore-formation, but not the membrane binding was the cause for these changes. Secondly, the effect of pneumolysin on cellular trafficking was investigated. Here, the variants showed no effect, but the wild-type led to an increase in overall endocytotic events and was itself internalised into the cell. In order to characterise a possible mechanism for internalisation, a GFP-tagged version of pneumolysin was used. Several fluorescence-labelled markers for different endocytotic pathways were used in a co-staining approach with pneumolysin. Furthermore, inhibitors for two key-players in classical endocytotic pathways, dynamin and myosin II, were used in order to investigate classical endocytotic pathways and their possible involvement in toxin internalisation. The second finding of this work is that pneumolysin is taken up into the cell via dynamin- and caveolin-independent pinocytosis, which could transfer the toxin to caveosomes. From there, the fate of the toxin remains unknown. Additionally, pneumolysin leads to an overall increase in endocytotic events. This observation led to the third aim of this work. If the toxin increases the overall rate of endocytosis, the question arises whether toxin internalisation favours bacterial tissue penetration of the host or whether it serves as a defence mechanism of the cell in order to degrade the protein. Thus, several proinflammatory cytokines were investigated, as previous studies describe an effect of pneumolysin on cytokine production. Surprisingly, only interleukin 6-production was increased after toxin-treatment and no effect of endocytotic inhibitors on the interleukin 6-production was observed. The conclusion from this finding is that pneumolysin leads to an increase of interleukin 6, which would not depend on the endocytotic uptake of pneumolysin. The production of interleukin 6 would enhance the production of acute phase proteins, T-cell activation, growth and differentiation. On the one hand, this activation could serve pathogen clearance from infected tissue. On the other hand, the production of interleukin 6 could promote a further penetration of pathogen into host tissue. This question should be further investigated.},
  subject      = {Streptococcus pneumoniae},
  language  = {en}
}