We assessed the production of OMVs from K. pneumoniae ATCC 13883 during in vitro culture. Bacteria were cultured in LB broth, and OMVs were purified from culture supernatants. TEM analysis showed that K. pneumoniae-derived vesicles were spherical bilayered structures with diameters of 20–200 nm (Fig. 1a). No bacteria or protein contaminants were observed. The small-sized OMVs with diameters of approximately 20–30 nm were commonly observed, whereas relatively

large-sized vesicles with diameters of > 50 nm were less commonly observed. This result suggests that K. pneumoniae produces and secretes OMVs into the extracellular milieu during in vitro culture. Klebsiella pneumoniae OMVs were subjected to SDS-PAGE. Many protein bands were identified in the K. pneumoniae OMVs, but the protein profiles were different between OMVs and whole-cell lysates (Fig. 1b), KU-60019 price suggesting the absence of bacterial contaminants. Proteomic analysis was conducted to identify proteins in the OMVs from K. pneumoniae ATCC 13883. We identified

159 proteins in the K. pneumoniae OMVs (Supporting Information, Table S1). The proteins identified in the K. pneumoniae ABT-199 clinical trial OMVs were predicted to occur in the extracellular space (n = 13), outer membrane (n = 24), periplasmic space (n = 25), inner membrane (n = 13) and cytoplasm (n = 84). Of the proteins identified in the K. pneumoniae OMVs, the outer membrane protein X, murein lipoprotein, phage shock protein: Thymidine kinase activates phage shock-protein expression, putative uncharacterized protein ygdR and 30S ribosomal protein S20 were the most abundant among the proteins located in the

outer membrane, periplasmic space, inner membrane, extracellular space and cytoplasm, respectively. These results suggest that K. pneumoniae OMVs contain numerous proteins originating from inner membrane and cytoplasm as well as outer membrane and periplasmic space. OMVs are naturally secreted products of Gram-negative bacteria, and OMV production appears to be a conserved process among Gram-negative bacteria (Beveridge, 1999; Kuehn & Kesty, 2005; Kulp & Kuehn, 2010). Additionally, Gram-positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis also produce membrane-derived vesicles (Lee et al., 2009; Rivera et al., 2010; Gurung et al., 2011). Deatherage et al. (2009) proposed the OMV biogenesis model in Salmonella typhimurium. During bacterial growth and division, localized reductions in the density of outer membrane–peptidoglycan and outer membrane–peptidoglycan–inner membrane associations result in the bulging and release of the outer membrane as OMVs. Based on this model, OMVs only reflect the outer membrane and periplasmic components. However, cytoplasmic and inner membrane proteins have been identified in OMVs from E. coli (Lee et al., 2008), H. pylori (Olofsson et al., 2010) and Acinetobacter baumannii (Kwon et al., 2009).