Helicobacter pylori does not use spermidine synthase to produce spermidine

Helicobacter pylori is the primary pathogen associated to gastritis and gastric cancer. Growth of H. pylori depends on the availability of spermidine in vivo. Interestingly, the genome of H. pylori contains an incomplete set of genes for the classical pathway of spermidine biosynthesis. It is thus not clear whether some other genes remained in the pathway would have any functions in spermidine biosynthesis. Here, we study spermidine synthase, which is responsible for the final catalytic process in the classical route. Protein sequence alignment reveals that H. pylori SpeE (HpSpeE) lacks key residues for substrate binding. By using isothermal titration calorimetry, we show that purified recombinant HpSpeE does not interact with the putative substrates putrescine and decarboxylated S-adenosylmethionine, and the product spermidine. High performance liquid chromatography analysis further demonstrates that HpSpeE has no detectable in vitro enzymatic activity. Additionally, intracellular spermidine level in speE-null mutant strain is comparable to that in the wild type strain. Collectively, our results suggest that HpSpeE is functionally distinct from spermidine production. H. pylori may instead employ the alternative pathway for spermidine synthesis which is dominantly exploited by other human gut microbes.