Authors:
McMillan DJ, Drèze PA, Vu T, Bessen DE, Guglielmini J, Steer AC, Carapetis JC, et al.
Authors notes:
Clinical Microbiology and Infection. 2013;19(5):E222-E229
Keywords:
Epidemiology, M protein, Streptococcus pyogenes, Typing, Vaccine, Virulence
Abstract
Group A Streptococcus (GAS) M protein is an important virulence factor and potential vaccine antigen, and constitutes the basis for strain typing (emm-typing).
Although >200 emm-types are characterized, structural data were obtained from only a limited number of emm-types.
We aim to evaluate the sequence diversity of near-full-length M proteins from worldwide sources and analyse their structure, sequence conservation and classification.
M protein sequence length, the presence or absence of sequence repeats and predicted secondary structure were assessed in the context of the latest vaccine developments.
Based on these global data, the M6 protein model is updated to a three representative M protein (M5, M80 and M77) model, to aid in epidemiological analysis, vaccine development and M protein-related pathogenesis studies.