Proteomic analysis of pathogenic bacterium Vibrio vulnificus.

In this study we have constructed a proteome reference map of the pathogenic bacterium Vibrio vulnificus. From the reference map, we identified several virulence-related proteins, such as ToxR and ToxS, as well as numerous proteins involved in diverse cellular functions. To search for additional virulence-related proteins, we compared the whole proteomes from the wild-type and toxR mutant of V. vulnificus and found that several proteins were up- or down-regulated in the toxR mutant. We suggest that these differentially regulated proteins whose expression is coordinately controlled by a virulence regulator ToxR, some of which are already implicated in virulence, play roles in the pathogenesis of V. vulnificus.