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Updated: Nov 11, 2025

CAPRRESI: Chimera Assembly by Plasmid Recovery and Restriction Enzyme Site Insertion
Published on: June 25, 2017
Defining chaperone-usher fimbriae repertoire in Serratia marcescens
Martín A González-Montalvo1, Faviola Tavares-Carreón2, Gloria M González1
1Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Facultad de Medicina, Departamento de Microbiología, Monterrey, Nuevo León, 64460, Mexico.
Abstract:
Chaperone-usher (CU) fimbriae are surface organelles particularly prevalent among the Enterobacteriaceae. Mainly associated to their adhesive properties, CU fimbriae play key roles in biofilm formation and host cell interactions. Little is known about the fimbriome composition of the opportunistic human pathogen Serratia marcescens. Here, by using a search based on consensus fimbrial usher protein (FUP) sequences, we identified 421 FUPs across 39 S. marcescens genomes. Further analysis of the FUP-containing loci allowed us to classify them into 20 conserved CU operons, 6 of which form the S. marcescens core CU fimbriome. A new systematic nomenclature is proposed according to FUP sequence phylogeny. We also established an in vivo transcriptional assay comparing CU promoter expression between an environmental and a clinical isolate of S. marcescens, which revealed that promoters from 3 core CU operons (referred as fgov, fpo, and fps) are predominantly expressed in the two strains and might represent key core adhesion appendages contributing to S. marcescens pathogenesis.
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