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Infection and Immunity, August 1999, p. 4134-4142, Vol. 67, No. 8
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Comparative Analysis of Legionella
pneumophila and Legionella micdadei
Virulence Traits
Amrita D.
Joshi, and
Michele S.
Swanson*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
The University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Received 3 November 1998/Returned for modification 4 January
1999/Accepted 27 May 1999
While the majority of Legionnaire's disease has been attributed to
Legionella pneumophila, Legionella micdadei can
cause a similar infection in immunocompromised people. Consistent with its epidemiological profile, the growth of L. micdadei in
cultured macrophages is less robust than that of L. pneumophila. To identify those features of the
Legionella spp. which are correlated to efficient growth in
macrophages, two approaches were taken. First, a phenotypic analysis
compared four clinical isolates of L. micdadei to one
well-characterized strain of L. pneumophila. Seven traits previously correlated with the virulence of L. pneumophila
were evaluated: infection and replication in cultured macrophages, evasion of phagosome-lysosome fusion, contact-dependent cytotoxicity, sodium sensitivity, osmotic resistance, and conjugal DNA transfer. By
nearly every measure, L. micdadei appeared less
virulent than L. pneumophila. The surprising exception was
L. micdadei 31B, which evaded lysosomes and replicated in
macrophages as efficiently as L. pneumophila, despite
lacking both contact-dependent cytopathicity and regulated sodium
sensitivity. Second, in an attempt to identify virulence factors
genetically, an L. pneumophila genomic library was screened
for clones which conferred robust intracellular growth on L. micdadei. No such loci were isolated, consistent with the multiple phenotypic differences observed for the two species. Apparently, L. pneumophila and L. micdadei use
distinct strategies to colonize alveolar macrophages, causing
Legionnaire's disease.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Michigan Medical School, 6734 Medical Sciences Building II, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0620. Phone: (734) 647-7295. Fax: (734) 764-3562. E-mail:
mswanson{at}umich.edu.
Infection and Immunity, August 1999, p. 4134-4142, Vol. 67, No. 8
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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