[Putative lipoproteins of Streptococcus suis type 2 identified by bioinformatic genome analysis]

To identify putative lipoproteins of Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (SS2).

First, I used the ScanProsite feature of Prosite and the website Database Of bacterial LipOProteins (DOLOP) to identify putative lipoproteins in the recently published genome of SS2 strains 05ZYH33, then validated the identified putative lipoproteins to exclude the false positive by a 'majority vote' approach following analysis with standard tools for signal peptide verification. Finally, putative functions were attributed to individual lipoproteins by reference to the identification of conserved domains of InterPro. Homologous proteins were identified by unfiltered BlastP homology searches (including conserved domain detection).

Among the 38 identified putative lipoproteins, 34 were validated as lipoprotein and 4 as false positive lipoproteins. The largest functional category (16/34, 44%) of lipoproteins was that predicted to comprise of substrate binding proteins of ATP-binding cassette transport systems. Other roles included lipoproteins that participated in adhesion (YP_001197698 and YP_001198710), protein export and folding.

Lipoproteins contributed to the physiology of SS2 and influenced its virulence.