Characterization of bacterial adhesin interactions with extracellular matrix components utilizing biosensor technology

Microbial adhesion to host tissue represents the first step in an infection process and is a potential target for the development of new antimicrobial agents. Our laboratory has focused on the molecular mechanisms of microbial adhesion to host extracellular matrix components that involve specific bacterial surface proteins, adhesins that interact with distinct sites on host ECM molecules. BIAcore is one of the techniques we use to characterize these interactions. In this communication we describe the use of BlAcore to (a) determine the binding constants and specificity of different forms of a recombinant collagen adhesin that all contain the active site but vary in amount of flanking sequence and (b) compare the ligand-binding kinetics of recombinant active sites of four fibronectin-binding adhesins from different bacteria.