|
Advertisement | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 279, Issue 1, 245-250, January 2, 2004
Helicobacter pylori Heat Shock Protein 60 Mediates Interleukin-6 Production by Macrophages via a Toll-like Receptor (TLR)-2-, TLR-4-, and Myeloid Differentiation Factor 88-independent Mechanism*![]() ¶ ||![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ¶¶ ||||
From the
Received for publication, July 21, 2003 , and in revised form, October 15, 2003.
Helicobacter pylori has been reported to induce interleukin-6 (IL-6) production in monocytes/macrophages and in chronically inflamed gastric tissues. The mechanism by which H. pylori induces IL-6 production in macrophages, however, has not been investigated. To identify the H. pylori factor responsible for this activity, we fractionated soluble proteins from H. pylori strain 26695 by ion exchange and size exclusion chromatography and screened the fractions for IL-6-inducing activity on RAW 264.7 macrophages. A single protein was purified and identified by mass spectrometry as H. pylori heat shock protein 60 (HSP60). Consistent with the observed IL-6-inducing activity of H. pylori HSP60, soluble protein extracts of H. pylori 26695 and SS1 strains that were depleted of this protein by affinity chromatography had dramatically reduced IL-6-inducing activities. The immunopurified HSP60 stimulated IL-6 production in macrophages. When stimulated with H. pylori HSP60 or intact bacteria, peritoneal macrophages from mice deficient in Toll-like receptor (TLR)-2, TLR-4, TLR-2/TLR-4, and myeloid differentiation factor 88 produced the same amount of IL-6 than macrophages from wild-type mice, demonstrating the independence of H. pylori HSP60 responses from these signaling molecules. H. pylori HSP60-induced IL-6 mRNA expression, and NF- B activation in RAW 264.7 cells was abrogated in the presence of MG-132, a proteasome inhibitor. In contrast, inhibitors of protein kinase A or C, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase, and phosphoinositide 3-kinase had no effect on IL-6 mRNA levels. This study demonstrates the induction of innate immune responses by H. pylori HSP60, thereby implicating this highly conserved protein in the pathophysiology of chronic gastritis.
The Gram-negative microaerophilic bacterium Helicobacter pylori colonizes mammalian stomachs, and its persistence in human tissues is linked to the development of chronic inflammation. Chronic gastritis is such a common feature of H. pylori infection that histopathologists commonly use this as a criterion for diagnosing the presence of H. pylori bacteria in gastric biopsies. In contrast, the development of peptic ulceration and gastric cancer in response to H. pylori infection is much less frequent, occurring in 10 and 1% of infections, respectively (1). Although there has been a concerted effort in the last decade to identify the bacterial factors that are associated with these severe forms of H. pylori related disease, little is currently known regarding those factors that induce chronic gastritis. One of the major H. pylori virulence factors is the cag pathogenicity island (cagPAI),1 which has been correlated with the more severe H. pylori associated pathologies and mediates its effects through gastric epithelial cells (2). Although only a proportion of H. pylori strains harbor a cagPAI, all of the cases of H. pylori infection are associated with the development of chronic gastritis. Therefore, it is likely that non-cagPAI factors promote chronic inflammation (3). One mechanism by which inflammatory processes might occur is via the activation of antigen-presenting cells, such as macrophages, within the gastric mucosa. Indeed, professional phagocytes appear to play a role in the chronic inflammatory lesions associated with H. pylori infection (4, 5). Nevertheless, as H. pylori LPS has a 100-fold lower biological activity to that of other Gram-negative bacteria (68), it is not likely to play a major role in macrophage activation in vivo. Conversely, certain soluble proteins in H. pylori extracts have been reported to activate mononuclear cells in vitro (911), but the identities of these proteins and of their receptors, for the most part, remain unknown.
Macrophage-derived cytokine production is strongly up-regulated during H. pylori infection (11). These innate responses are principally characterized by increases in the expression levels of IL-1
The findings above suggest that IL-6 could have critical functions for the pathophysiology of H. pylori infection. Thus, the aim of the current study was to identify novel H. pylori proteins capable of inducing IL-6 in macrophages. To this end, we fractionated a soluble cell extract of the genome-sequenced H. pylori 26695 strain by anion exchange and size exclusion chromatography and tested the fractions for IL-6-inducing activity on RAW 264.7 cells. We have identified HSP60 as the main H. pylori factor inducing IL-6 release from murine macrophages through a signaling pathway involving NF-
MaterialsPharmacological inhibitors of NF- B (MG-132), PKA (H89), PKC (Gö 6983), MAPK kinase (PD98 059), and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (wortmannin) were purchased from Calbiochem. Materials for chromatography were from Amersham Biosciences. Highly purified H. pylori LPS was extracted by the phenol-water procedure after pretreatment of bacteria with Pronase E and subsequent purification by enzymatic treatments with RNase A, DNase II, and proteinase K and ultracentrifugation as described elsewhere (6). Escherichia coli LPS (19) was prepared by Dr. U. Zähringer (Center for Medicine and Biosciences, Borstel, Germany) and kindly provided by Dr. D. J. Philpott (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France). All of the other chemicals were from Sigma.
BacteriaH. pylori SS1 (20) and 26695 (21) strains were used throughout. Bacteria were maintained on blood agar base number 2 (Oxoid) plates containing 10% horse blood, 10 µg/ml vancomycin, 2.5 IU/liter polymyxin B, 5 µg/ml trimethoprim, and 2.5 µg/ml fungizone under microaerobic conditions at 37 °C. Prior to each experiment, H. pylori was grown overnight in the same conditions by shaking at 140 rpm in Brain-Heart Infusion (Oxoid) liquid medium containing 0.2%
Mice, Macrophages, and Culture ConditionsThe murine macrophage cell line RAW 264.7 was maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (Invitrogen) supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum, 1 mM sodium pyruvate, and 10 mM HEPES at 37 °C in a humidified 5% CO2 atmosphere. Wild-type (WT) C57BL/6 mice were purchased from Charles River. TLR-2, TLR-4, and MyD88 knock-out C57BL/6 mice were obtained from Professor S. Akira (Osaka University, Osaka, Japan) and bred in the animal facilities of the Institut Pasteur. Double TLR-2/TLR-4 knock-out mice were generated by V. Balloy Resident peritoneal macrophages from these animals were purified as described previously (23). For the experiments, RAW 264.7 cells or peritoneal macrophages were plated in 24-well plates (5 x 105 cells/well) or in 6-well plates (2 x 106 cells/well) in the same medium for 2 h, washed, and stimulated with H. pylori with a multiplicity of infection of 10, with purified HSP60, with H. pylori or E. coli LPS, or with Pam3Cys. Cells were stimulated for the appropriate times (24 h for IL-6 assays, 6 h for mRNA analysis, and 5 h for NF- Column Chromatography of H. pylori Soluble ExtractsSoluble proteins of H. pylori 26695 (6.7 mg) were separated by ion exchange chromatography on a Q-Sepharose High Performance column (80-ml bed volume) at pH 8.0. Proteins were eluted using a linear gradient of NaCl from 25 to 500 mM at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. Fractions (4 ml) were collected from the column. Aliquots (20 µl) from fractions were then added to RAW 264.7 cells for 24 h, and IL-6 concentrations were determined in each cell-free supernatant. The fractions that induced IL-6 production were pooled, desalted, and concentrated with Centriprep YM-50 and Centricon YM-50 columns (Millipore). The resulting concentrate was subjected to further purification by size exclusion chromatography on a Sephacryl S-100 column (2000-ml bed volume). Fractions (4 ml) were collected after elution with 400 ml of PBS, pH 7.4, and assayed on macrophages for IL-6-inducing activity. The corresponding fractions were pooled and concentrated. An aliquot was separated by SDS-PAGE using a 10% gel, and the gel was stained with Coomassie Blue or with silver nitrate. A protein band was extracted from the gel and analyzed by mass spectrometry at the Plate-Form Technique 3 (Proteomic Genopole, Institut Pasteur). Immunopurification of H. pylori HSP60 An AminoLink Plus immobilization kit (Pierce) was used to purify HSP60. 600 µg of H. pylori total soluble protein extracts were applied to an agarose column that had been coupled with 6 mg of a polyclonal antibody to H. pylori HSP60 (24) according to the manufacturer's instructions. The column was washed with PBS, and the flow-through was collected. HSP60 was eluted from the column using 0.1 M glycine, pH 2.5. The protein concentrations of the fractions were determined prior to concentration using Centricon YM-10 ultrafiltration units (Millipore). Determination of IL-6 ConcentrationIL-6 levels were determined in macrophage supernatants using the Duo Set enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay development kit (R&D Systems) according to the manufacturer's protocol. Measure of Endotoxin ContaminationLPS concentration was determined using the Limulus amebocyte lysate colorimetric assay QCL-1000 from BioWhittaker. Western BlottingH. pylori proteins were separated by 10% SDS-PAGE and transferred onto nitrocellulose membranes by electro-blotting. Membranes were blocked for 2 h at 4 °C using PBS containing 5% nonfat dry milk and 0.1% Tween 20. Polyclonal antibody to HSP60 (1:50000) (24) or to UreB (1:20000) (25) and a goat anti-rabbit antibody conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (1:20000, Bio-Rad) were used each for 2 h at room temperature, respectively. Chemiluminescent detection was performed using Western blotting detection reagents ECL (Amersham Biosciences) and exposure to Hyperfilm MP (Amersham Biosciences).
Reverse Transcriptase-PCRMacrophage total RNA was isolated using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen). Subsequently, RNA (1 µg) from each sample was reverse-transcribed using 25 units of Superscript II reverse transcriptase (Invitrogen) and PCR was conducted using 2 µl of cDNA and 0.25 units of TaqDNA polymerase (Amersham Biosciences). For IL-6, 15 pmol each of 5' and 3' primers were used with 3 pmol each of
Electrophoretic Mobility Shift AssayMacrophages were lysed with a buffer containing 10 mM HEPES, pH 8, 60 mM KCl, 1 mM EDTA, 1 mM dithiothreitol, 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, and 0.5% Nonidet P-40. Suspensions were centrifuged at 1200 x g for 5 min at 4 °C. Nuclear pellets were resuspended in 100 µl of a solution containing 25 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.0, 400 mM KCl, 1 mM dithiothreitol, 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, and 20% w/v glycerol and were rapidly frozen and thawed three times. After centrifugation at 4000 x g at 4 °C for 12 min, supernatants containing nuclear proteins were removed and aliquot were used for protein determination. Nuclear extracts (1 µg of protein) were incubated for 30 min with a DNA probe corresponding to the Statistical AnalysesThe Student Newman-Keul's test was used for comparisons between multiple groups. The Student's t test was used for single comparisons between two groups.
H. pylori HSP60 Is the Activator of IL-6 Production by MacrophagesTo purify the H. pylori factor responsible for IL-6 synthesis by macrophages, soluble bacterial proteins were subjected to anion exchange chromatography. Fractions with IL-6-inducing activity on RAW 264.7 macrophages were identified (Fig. 1A), corresponding to fractions 88124. Because urease is another major protein of H. pylori known to induce cytokine production by macrophages (26), we determined the urease activity of the eluted fractions. Urease activity was detected in fractions 6096 (Fig. 1A). To exclude the possible involvement of urease on IL-6 activation, only fractions (numbers 96120) eluted after the urease peak were concentrated. The pooled fractions were subjected to size exclusion chromatography. The fractions tested for IL-6-inducing activity (Fig. 1B) (2231) were concentrated and separated by electrophoresis. A single 5560-kDa protein band was revealed by Coomassie Blue staining (Fig. 1C). This protein was identified by mass spectrometry as being a homolog of E. coli GroEL, designated here as H. pylori HSP60 (also referred to as HspB) (24). Urease activity was not detected in this purified extract, and no other bands were observed on the polyacrylamide gel after silver staining (data not shown).
Immunopurification of H. pylori HSP60 Because chaperone proteins of the HSP60 family have an essential function in bacteria, we did not attempt to inactivate the hsp60 gene. Instead, the involvement of H. pylori HSP60 on IL-6 stimulation was confirmed by an immunopurification approach. H. pylori HSP60 protein was detected in soluble protein extracts of H. pylori strains 26695 and SS1 (Fig. 2A). The concentration of HSP60, however, was dramatically decreased after immunopurification on a column coated with an anti-H. pylori HSP60 antibody (Fig. 2A). In addition, the HSP60 protein was detected in the concentrated eluates by Western blotting (data not shown). Conversely, the concentration of UreB in immunopurified extracts was not affected by chromatography (Fig. 2A), suggesting that the column specifically retained HSP60. IL-6 synthesis by RAW 264.7 macrophages was significantly increased following stimulation with soluble protein extracts of the two H. pylori strains when compared with unstimulated cells (data not shown). Nonetheless, IL-6 production was decreased by 88.8 ± 3.1 and 94.5 ± 1.9% when macrophages were activated with 2.5 µg/ml of the concentrated flow-through when compared with the stimulation with the same concentration of total H. pylori soluble proteins for 26695 and SS1 strains, respectively (Fig. 2B). A concentration-dependent increase in macrophage IL-6 production was observed in RAW 264.7 cells that had been stimulated with the immunopurified HSP60 (Fig. 3).
We determined that immunopurified H. pylori HSP60 contained 15 enzyme units/ml, equivalent to 75 enzyme units of contaminating LPS for 400 ng of HSP60. When H. pylori and E. coli LPS, corresponding to the amounts detected in 400 ng of HSP60 preparation, were added to RAW 264.7 cells for 24 h, IL-6 concentrations were 0 and 200 pg/ml, respectively. IL-6 production by HSP60-stimulated RAW 264.7 macrophages was not altered by the use of 10 µg/ml polymyxin B, whereas IL-6 synthesis by macrophages activated with 1 µg/ml H. pylori LPS or with 10 ng/ml E. coli LPS was inhibited by 93 and 95% when polymyxin B was added to the cultures, respectively (data not shown). In addition, IL-6 production was inhibited by 93 ± 2,5% when RAW 264.7 cells were stimulated with 400 ng/ml boiled HSP60 for 24 h compared with the stimulation with the same concentration of native H. pylori HSP60 (data not shown; p < 0.05, n = 2). Together, these results suggest that contaminating LPS is not responsible for IL-6 induction observed with the H. pylori HSP60. H. pylori and HSP60-induced Macrophage IL-6 Production Does Not Require TLR-2, TLR-4, or MyD88 Previous reports have demonstrated that TLRs-MyD88 complexes may mediate the signaling of HSPs (2729). To determine whether whole H. pylori and purified H. pylori HSP60 induce IL-6 production in macrophages through these signaling pathways, we stimulated peritoneal macrophages from WT, TLR-2/, TLR-4/, TLR-2//TLR-4/, or MyD88/ mice. As shown in Fig. 4A, IL-6 synthesis was induced by purified H. pylori HSP60 or by intact bacteria in primary cultures of WT mouse macrophages, demonstrating that IL-6 synthesis is not a property restricted to cell lines. In addition, IL-6 production in WT peritoneal macrophages was not significantly different from that observed in macrophages recovered from TLR-2/, TLR-4/, or MyD88/ mice following stimulation with any of these factors (Fig. 4A).
Conversely, a significant increase of IL-6 production was observed when macrophages from WT mice were stimulated with the TLR-2 ligand Pam3Cys (30), whereas IL-6 was not synthesized by macrophages from TLR-2/ mice activated with this compound (Fig. 4B). Additionally, macrophages from TLR-4/ mice, which had been stimulated with E. coli LPS or H. pylori LPS, produced 93.3 ± 1.5 and 69.4 ± 18.5% lower amounts of IL-6 when compared with macrophages from WT animals, respectively (Fig. 4C).
H. pylori- and HSP60-induced Macrophage IL-6 Expression Is NF-
Interleukin-6 production in the gastric mucosa has been shown to be consistently induced by H. pylori infection and to correlate with the development of chronic gastritis (12, 13). Although endothelial (31) and epithelial cells (32) can produce minor quantities of IL-6 upon H. pylori stimulation, activated macrophages are the main source of IL-6. Thus, our goal was to describe how H. pylori might activate IL-6 in macrophages. For this reason, we fractionated total soluble H. pylori proteins by ion exchange and size exclusion chromatography and tested the eluates for IL-6 production in macrophages. This resulted in the identification of HSP60 as the main H. pylori factor responsible for the induction of IL-6 production in macrophages. Bacterial proteins belonging to the E. coli GroEL family are highly immunogenic and have been reported to confer protective immunity against pathogens (33), including H. pylori (24). In addition, it has been previously shown that the HSPs from eukaryotic organisms and from other pathogenic bacteria can stimulate pro-inflammatory cytokine production in macrophages (34, 35). However, to our knowledge, this is the first report showing the direct activation of macrophages by a Helicobacter HSP. Macrophages play an important role in innate immune responses to microbial pathogens. Indeed, IL-6 release by macrophages activated with various intact Gram-positive or Gramnegative bacteria or with bacterial-derived products has been fully documented. Interestingly, it was shown previously that HSPs from bacterial species of the Mycobacterium, Legionella, or Escherichia genera are potent IL-6 activators in mouse macrophages (34). It was also reported that H. pylori urease is a potent activator of human mucosal macrophages for IL-6 generation (26); nonetheless, the amount of recombinant urease used in that study was 100-times greater than the quantity of H. pylori HSP60 necessary to obtain similar levels of IL-6 by murine macrophages. Therefore, HSP60 appears to be the main IL-6 inducer, even if other factors may be capable of inducing IL-6 when present in high concentrations. Therefore, we can hypothesize that, in vivo, it is possible that IL-6 expression in macrophages is essentially HSP60-dependent. In support of this hypothesis, cytoplasmic HSP60 has been found in the extracellular medium of H. pylori cultures (36, 37) and has been detected in the lamina propria of the gastric antrum from patients with H. pylori gastritis (38). Thus, H. pylori HSP60 release is likely to occur in vivo and may be capable of reaching mucosal macrophages within the gastric epithelium as a consequence of the disruption of epithelial tight junctions during H. pylori infection.
Recently, it was shown that tumor necrosis factor-
Although eukaryotic and prokaryotic HSPs are known to stimulate macrophages (35), there is no consensus regarding the nature of the receptor of HSPs. Several studies have demonstrated that TLR-2 (27), TLR-4 (28), or both (41) are implicated in the recognition of HSPs. In contrast, it has been reported that the TLR-4 receptor complex is not involved in the binding of human HSP60 by murine macrophages and that the receptor of human HSP60 is different from that of HSP70 and Gp96 (42), which signal through TLR-2 and TLR-4 (29, 41). Therefore, we determined the potential involvement of TLRs on IL-6-inducing activity by H. pylori HSP60 or by intact H. pylori and showed that IL-6 expression did not require either TLR-2 or TLR-4. This result was confirmed by the fact that macrophages from mice deficient for MyD88, an adapter molecule recruited by TLR-2 and TLR-4 (43), responded similarly to WT macrophages upon both types of stimulation. Accordingly, it has been shown that cytokine synthesis by peritoneal macrophages stimulated with intact Staphylococcus bacteria was TLR-4-independent and partially TLR-2-independent (44). As proposed by Habich et al. (45), it is possible that HSPs from different organisms may bind to different receptor complexes. Together, these observations and the present results raise the question regarding the nature of the macrophage receptor for H. pylori HSP60. Alternative receptors for human HSP60 (46) and for the HSP60 of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum (47) have already been described. We also demonstrated that a complete inhibition of IL-6 expression induced by HSP60 occurred with the specific proteasome inhibitor, MG-132, whereas inhibitors of PKA, PKC, MAPK kinase, and phosphoinositide 3-kinase had no effect, suggesting that macrophage IL-6 expression in response to H. pylori involves NF- In conclusion, we have described a new role for H. pylori HSP60, implicating it in the pathophysiology of H. pylori gastritis, through the release of IL-6 by macrophages. This finding supports the hypothesis that the host is able to recognize and respond to a H. pylori protein that is constitutively synthesized and/or essential for bacterial survival and is present in all of the H. pylori strains. Indeed, the recognition of H. pylori HSP60 by innate immune system cells may represent a mechanism by which H. pylori induces chronic gastritis, which is a common feature of all infections attributed to this Gram-negative pathogen.
* This work was funded by the Institut Pasteur (PTR 94) (to C. W., M. C., and R. L. F.) and ARC (project number 4428) (to R. L. F.). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
¶ Present address: Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Inra de Clermont-Ferrand-Thiex, F-63122 Saint-Genes-Champanelle, France.
|| Present address: EMI 0212, Faculte Necker Enfants-malades, 75743 Paris, France.
¶¶ Supported by the Health Research Board (Ireland). |||| To whom correspondence should be addressed: UPBM, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris, France. Tel.: 33-1-40613324; Fax: 33-1-40613640; E-mail: rferrero{at}pasteur.fr.
1 The abbreviations used are: cagPAI, cag pathogenicity island; LPS, lipopolysaccharide; IL, interleukin; PKA and PKC, protein kinases A and C, respectively; HSP, heat shock protein; NF-
We thank Professor S. Akira (Osaka University, Osaka, Japan) for the generous gift of TLR knock-out breeder mice.
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Advertisement | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||