Larger variations in the efficiencies of plating were observed only for strains showing strongly increased SDS/EDTA sensitivity and likely result from minor fluctuations in the concentration

of these membrane perturbants in the different batches of medium (prepared freshly for each experiment). Effects of inactivation and overexpression of ppiD on the Cpx envelope stress response The σE signal transduction pathway partially overlaps with the CpxA/R pathway in sensing and responding to folding stress in the cell envelope [9]. Since ppiD is a member of the Cpx regulon [18] we asked whether the Cpx system would respond to inactivation this website or increased expression of ppiD. As shown in Figure 1B, inactivation of ppiD had no significant effect ABT-263 order on Cpx activity in any of the tested strains, indicating that PpiD is not specifically involved in cell envelope functions that are monitored by the Cpx stress response pathway. In contrast, lack of SurA induced the Cpx response ~4-fold, as is consistent

with the involvement of SurA in OMP and pilus biogenesis [20] and with misfolding pilus subunits being sensed by the Cpx signaling system [22]. The presence of ppiD in find more multicopy led to an about 2-fold induction of the Cpx response in all strains but the surA single and the surA ppiD double mutants. In the surA ppiD double mutant increased expression of ppiD from pPpiD slightly reduced Cpx activity, whereas it showed no significant effect on Cpx activity in the surA single mutant. ppiD is a multicopy suppressor of the lethal surA skp phenotype Benzatropine We also asked whether ppiD in multicopy would suppress the synthetic lethality of a surA skp mutant. SurA-depletion strains were constructed by placing the chromosomal surA gene under the control of the IPTG-inducible promoter P Llac-O1 [23], so that expression of surA could be shut off in the absence of IPTG. As expected, P Llac-O1 -surA Δskp cells grew poorly without IPTG but normal growth was restored by providing copies of either surA or skp on a plasmid (Figure 2B). Unexpectedly, growth in the absence of IPTG was

also restored by ppiD in multicopy (pPpiD), although the colonies grew up slower and remained smaller than those grown in the presence of IPTG. The growth-promoting effect of pPpiD was abolished by the introduction of a frameshift mutation that results in a premature stop at codon 173 of the plasmid-borne ppiD gene (pPpiDfs601). Thus, suppression of surA skp lethality elicited by pPpiD requires the intact ppiD gene. Multicopy ppiD also restored viability of surA skp cells in liquid media (Figure 2C). The P Llac-O1 -surA Δskp strain ceased growth approximately 3.5 h after transfer into non-permissive media (LB without IPTG) but continued to grow when it carried pPpiD, although with slower rates during the mid- to late logarithmic phase.