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Identification and expression of a host-recognized antigen, FspA, from Flavobacterium psychrophilum

¹ Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, University of Victoria, PO Box 3055, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P6
² Microtek Research and Development Ltd, 6761 Kirkpatrick Crescent, Saanichton, BC, Canada V8M 1Z8

Correspondence
William W. Kay
wkay{at}uvic.ca

Flavobacterium psychrophilum is the aetiological agent of rainbow trout fry syndrome, an economically important disease of immature salmonid fish for which there is no vaccine. Convalescent serum from the host, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), reacted strongly with a 20 kDa, Flavobacterium-specific protein antigen (subsequently named FspA) from F. psychrophilum. Protein-enriched, detergent-partitioned samples were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and the protein target was excised, proteolytically cleaved and the resulting peptides analysed by MS. Quadrupole-time-of-flight MS was used to generate a fragmented peptide spectrum. The resulting peptide sequences were then used to design degenerate PCR primers to amplify the gene (fspA) of interest: 612 bp encoding 203 aa, including a putative 19 aa N-terminal signal sequence which predicted a processed 19 303·6 Da protein. FspA proved to be unique and only homologous to two unspecified sequences reported from Flavobacterium johnsoniae, although weakly homologous to a Yersinia pseudotuberculosis adhesin. An amplified gene fragment (537 bp, encoding 179 aa) was further cloned into an expression vector, expressed as a 30 kDa N-terminal fusion protein and found to retain its strong reactivity with host serum antibodies. These results suggest that the surface-localized FspA may be an important subunit vaccine candidate antigen against F. psychrophilum.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the sequence reported in this paper is AY445520.

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