However, it is still unknown how environmental pressures select for to survive by losing the expression of OmpC. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the loss of OmpC in can promote not only antimicrobial resistance, but also serum resistance. pathway for the clearance of OmpC-expressing is resistant to not only antibiotics, but also the serum bactericidal effect, which is mediated from the C1q and anti-OmpC antibody-dependent classical pathway. INTRODUCTION Carbapenems are often used to treat serious infections caused by multidrug-resistant strains of may become a serious problem. In is related to the loss of OmpC expression (23). The loss of OmpC expression may be due to selection under antibiotic pressure. 2′-Hydroxy-4′-methylacetophenone OmpA in is well known as a virulence determinant for increased survival in macrophages, serum resistance, and invasion of brain microvascular endothelial cells (5, 18, 28, 36C38, 40). The deletion of in isolated from Crohn’s disease was shown to decrease adherence and the ability to invade intestinal cells (29, 30). OmpC 2′-Hydroxy-4′-methylacetophenone is also characterized as a lactoferrin binding protein (13, 31). Recently, it has been shown that the loss of OmpK36 in leads to increased resistance to antibiotics and susceptibility to neutrophil phagocytosis (9). The aims of this study were to characterize the role of OmpC in antimicrobial resistance and bacterial virulence in 2837-2/05, producing the CMY-2 AmpC enzyme and TEM-1 narrow-spectrum -lactamase, was isolated from an intra-abdominal drainage culture (23). This strain expressed only OmpA and OmpC, without OmpF, and was used for mutant construction and protein expression. JM110 and BL21 were used for the construction and expression of His6-tagged OmpC protein. was grown in Luria-Bertani (LB) broth with agitation at 37C. When necessary, the antibiotics kanamycin (50 g/ml) and chloramphenicol (20 g/ml) were used for selection. Construction of an isogenic mutant and a Cldn5 complemented strain. The deletion mutant was constructed by allelic exchange mutagenesis (22). The oligonucleotide primers used for construction are listed in Table 1. The promoter region (800 bp) of (accession no. EU372012) was amplified with primers com_ompC-2 (HindIII) and dpompC (SspI+StuI) and cloned into pUC18 to generate plasmid pMW618. The 800-bp fragment, including the 170-bp coding region and the 630-bp downstream region of coding region, a chloramphenicol cassette (Cm) (807 bp) was cloned into the plasmid pMW619 digested with StuI, which generated plasmid pMW620. Finally, the 2 2.4-kb fragment, including the promoter, Cm, and downstream region, was amplified with primers com_ompC-2 (XbaI) and dsompC (XbaI) and subcloned into the temperature-sensitive plasmid pKO3 digested with XbaI to generate the replacement plasmid pMW621. The plasmid pMW621 was introduced into 2837-2/05 by electroporation and counterselected with 5% sucrose. Finally, the gene was replaced with Cm, and the strain was named SW307 and confirmed by Southern blotting. PCR also confirmed that the gene of SW307 was removed from the chromosome (data not shown). Table 1 Primers used in the study gene (1,095 bp) was generated from the genomic DNA of wild-type 2837-2/05 with primers rfOmpC-1 (BamHI) and rfOmpC-2 (XhoI) (the sequences are shown in Table 1) and cloned into plasmid pET30b (Invitrogen, Cergy-Pontoise, France). The expression of the His6-tagged OmpC protein in BL21 was under induction with 0.3 mM isopropyl–d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) at 16C for 16 h. The purification of His6-tagged OmpC protein was done following the instructions of GE Amersham for Ni2+ affinity chromatography, with buffer containing 8 M urea to avoid protein aggregation. The recombinant OmpC protein (rOmpC) was dialyzed with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) containing 6 M urea and concentrated by using an ultrafiltration cell (Amicon Corp., Lexington, MA) with a 10-kDa membrane. 2′-Hydroxy-4′-methylacetophenone BALB/c mice were used for generation of OmpC polyclonal antibody by standard protocols. The protein rOmpC was directly recovered from SDS-10% PAGE gels and injected into mice subcutaneously, followed by 2 boosters every 7 days. Immune.