Both neoplastic and Neisseria meningitidis cells can obtain iron from transferrin in vivo. Previous findings (Holbein, 1980) showed that the murine hypoferremic response inhibits Neisseria meningitidis infection by iron deprivation. The present studies demonstrated that hypoferremia does not limit Fe acquisition by or growth of murine lymphoma cells. Transferrin binding sites on lymphoma cells and N. meningitidis were enumerated and the transferrin binding affinities were determined. Iron deprivation increased the number of transferrin binding sites on N. meningitidis cells. N. subflava and Escherichia coli were unable to bind transferrin. Competition binding studies demonstrated that lymphoma cells bound human transferrin over murine and bovine transferrin, conalbumin, and lactoferrin and suggested that neisserial transferrin binding sites had lower specificity. Further competition studies indicated that lymphoma transferrin binding sites had higher affinity for ferri-transferrin than for apo-transferrin while neisserial sites bound these two ligands to the same extent. This can explain why hypoferremia inhibits iron acquisition by N. meningitidis but not by lymphoma cells.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.75437 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Caldwell, Margaret |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Microbiology and Immunology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000547418, proquestno: AAINL44329, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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