• Lin Ge, Xinyu Liu, Rimei Chen, Yongan Xu, Yi Y Zuo, Robert N Cooney, and Guirong Wang.
• Department of Surgery, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, 300070, China.
• Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2016 Jan 8; 469 (2): 171-5.

AbstractSurfactant protein B (SP-B) is essential for lung function. Previous studies have indicated that a SP-B 1580C/T polymorphism (SNP rs1130866) was associated with lung diseases including pneumonia. The SNP causes an altered N-linked glycosylation modification at Asn129 of proSP-B, e.g. the C allele with this glycosylation site but not in the T allele. This study aimed to generate humanized SP-B transgenic mice carrying either SP-B C or T allele without a mouse SP-B background and then examine functional susceptibility to bacterial pneumonia in vivo. A total of 18 transgenic mouse founders were generated by the DNA microinjection method. These founders were back-crossed with SP-B KO mice to eliminate mouse SP-B background. Four founder lines expressing similar SP-B levels to human lung were chosen for further investigation. After intratracheal infection with 50 μl of Pseudomonas aeruginosa solution (1 × 10(6) CFU/mouse) or saline in SP-B-C, SP-B-T mice the mice were sacrificed 24 h post-infection and tissues were harvested. Analysis of surfactant activity revealed differential susceptibility between SP-B-C and SP-B-T mice to bacterial infection, e.g. higher minimum surface tension in infected SP-B-C versus infected SP-B-T mice. These results demonstrate for the first time that human SP-B C allele is more susceptible to bacterial pneumonia than SP-B T allele in vivo. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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