A QUICK WAY TO DETECT, DISCRIMINATE AND QUANTIFY SIDEROPHORES BY FLUORESCENCE ASSAYS

Iron is vital for bacteria, as it plays a central role in energy production, intermediate metabolism, DNA synthesis, nitrogen fixation etc. to survive in host system, Bacteria primarily secrete siderophores that specifically chelate iron with high affinity and actively transport this ferric siderophore complex inside cell. Siderophore production and ferric siderophore acquisition are frequently associated with microbial infections. Moreover, pathogenic bacteria obtain iron with TonB dependent ferric siderophore transport systems. For example, the outer membrane protein IutA actively transports the iron complex ferric aerobactin (FeAero), and the inner membrane protein TonB provides the energy for this uptake reaction. I created fluorescent sensors that monitor high affinity binding reactions, and used them to detect, discriminate and quantify ferric siderophores, as either isolated iron complexes or in complex mixture of metabolites and other biochemicals. By introducing site‐directed Cys residues in bacterial iron transporters and modifying them with maleimide fluorophores, we generated living cells that bind but do not transport target compound. By cloning, genetically engineering and fluoresceinating ferric siderophore transporters, we created specific sensors for the native, degraded and glucosylated forms of the catecholate ferric enterobactin, for the hydroximates ferric aerobactin, ferrichrome and ferrioxamine B, for the porphyrins hemin and vitamin B 12 and so on. When employed in spectroscopic analysis, these constructs sensitively detected respective ferric siderophores or target compounds and measured their concentrations in solutions. Sensitive Assays of Biochemical specificity, affinity, and capacity are valuable for both basic research and drug discovery. The sensors, which we created monitored production of siderophores by the pathogens in blood samples, food samples or clinical samples, each of which manifested a particular profile of iron chelator production.