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Infection and Immunity, February 2002, p. 974-980, Vol. 70, No. 2
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 70.2.974-980.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
School of Health Science, Griffith UniversityGold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Received 14 May 2001/ Returned for modification 16 July 2001/ Accepted 27 September 2001
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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Adherence of pathogens to host surfaces is a prerequisite step in the pathogenesis of almost all infectious diseases. Bacterial adherence requires the specific interaction of bacterial molecules, termed adhesins, with host cell membrane molecules or extracellular matrix proteins (2, 16). A modification of this typical interaction is employed by the attaching and effacing enteropathogens which insert the bacterial protein Tir into host cell membranes for use as the receptor for the bacterial adhesin intimin (21). Disruption of the adhesin-receptor interaction in many paradigm systems, by mutagenesis or competitive inhibition, resulting in a nonadherent phenotype, is typically associated with a significant reduction in virulence of the pathogen (16, 26, 36). Conversely, the elucidation of specific roles of individual adhesins is complicated by redundancy attributable to the presence of multiple adhesins, as is the case with many species, for example Bordetella pertussis (29).
A significant effort has been put into preliminary characterization of B. pseudomallei interactions with eukaryotic cells, in particular the ability of B. pseudomallei to survive within mammalian phagocytic cells. It has been shown that B. pseudomallei has the ability to survive within polymorphonuclear leukocytes (12, 19, 27), macrophages (13, 14, 19, 27), and nonphagocytic cell lines (14, 19). Similar interactions with Acanthamoeba have also been described (18). Recently, B. pseudomallei has been reported to cause mammalian cell fusion (22), an apparently novel phenotype among those displayed by bacterial pathogens. Relative to the interest in intracellular survival, the preceding steps in pathogenesis, including adherence to host surfaces, have received scant attention. There has been one report of adherence of B. pseudomallei to human pharyngeal cells, from which it was concluded that B. pseudomallei displayed low attachment ability (1). Despite this, intrabronchial inoculation of mice with B. pseudomallei resulted in significant bacterial loads in the lungs, indicating that B. pseudomallei has the ability to adhere to the respiratory tract in vivo (1).
Given the importance of adherence to host surfaces in microbial pathogenesis, we decided to investigate the adherence of B. pseudomallei. It was our intention to clarify this situation by developing an in vitro model of adherence using the standard methodology of allowing bacteria to adhere to epithelial cell lines in culture, as opposed to primary cells shaking in suspension (1).
| Identification of the B. pseudomallei adherent phenotype. |
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as a negative control (32). The statistical significance of the differences between the means was assessed using a one-way analysis of variance performed with the Bonferroni post hoc test. The results from these experiments (Fig. 1A)
show that B. pseudomallei grown at 30°C adheres to each cell line significantly more than B. pseudomallei grown at 37°C or DH5
(P < 0.001). While the levels of adherence to each individual cell line show considerable variation, there is no outstanding lack of adherence to any particular cell line compared to the other cell lines. This is perhaps indicative of the broad tropism of B. pseudomallei. While this might be the case, experimental evidence from many groups suggesting the ability of B. pseudomallei to survive within macrophages (13, 14, 19, 27) indicates that organ tropism may be complicated by dissemination within such cells (34). Bacteria grown in low-salt and high-salt-low-iron media adhered to a similar degree to that of those grown in high-salt media for each tested cell line (results not shown). Three other strains of B. pseudomallei (RBH, THP375, and 03) (6) grown at 30 and 37°C in standard LB medium were also tested for adherence to ME-180 cells. While there was some variation in the degree of adherence displayed by each strain, in each case the 30 and 37°C phenotypes paralleled that seen with strain 08 (results not shown).
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grown at these temperatures was tested for adherence to ME-180 cells. Adherence of cultures grown at 37 and 30°C was found to be 1.33% ± 0.09% and 1.04% ± 0.08%, respectively. Similarly, strain E264 of the closely related but relatively avirulent species Burkholderia thailandensis (3, 4) was grown at 37 and 30°C and the degrees of adherence to ME-180 cells were 4.76% ± 0.33% and 4.61% ± 1.21%, respectively. This is potentially another important difference between these species, in addition to the previously demonstrated difference in virulence (3, 4). These results clearly demonstrate that the adherence phenotypes displayed by B. pseudomallei grown at 30 and 37°C are not an artifact of the methods employed in this investigation. The apparent temperature regulation of adherence could be the reason why a previous study found B. pseudomallei to adhere to pharyngeal cells only at low levels (1). All of the preceding experiments were conducted with stationary-phase cultures, and even though cultures grown at 30°C were of an optical density equivalent to that of those grown at 37°C at the time of assay, it was decided that any potential effects of the growth phase should be identified at each temperature. The results shown in Fig. 1B clearly demonstrate that bacteria from stationary-phase 30°C cultures adhered significantly more than logarithmic-phase 30°C cultures and both logarithmic- and stationary-phase 37°C cultures (P < 0.001). A modest increase in adherence was observed in the logarithmic-phase 37°C cultures in comparison to the stationary-phase 37°C cultures. Taken together, with no information regarding the molecular basis of the demonstrated phenotypes, adherence would appear to be regulated in a complex manner.
| Characterization of temperature effects on B. pseudomallei adherence. |
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The temperature shift experiments described above present an interesting point: bacteria grown at 30°C and incubated at 37°C in LB medium without epithelial cells show a significant reduction in adherence, whereas those incubated at 37°C with epithelial cells in cell culture medium during the assay maintain high levels of adherence. To address this, another temperature shift experiment was devised to uncouple any potential influence of the cell culture medium from the epithelial cells on adherence. Cultures used in the assay were grown at 30°C to stationary phase, pelleted by centrifugation, resuspended in cell culture medium (McCoy's 5a medium), and incubated at either 30 or 37°C for 4 h prior to adherence assays. Respectively, these results were 91.65% ± 21.19% and 31.96% ± 2.94%. Comparison with the results shown in Fig. 2C indicates that incubation of 30°C-grown stationary-phase bacteria at 37°C in cell culture medium allows for a substantial maintenance of adherence relative to incubation in LB medium (P < 0.005). Incubation of 30°C-grown stationary-phase bacteria in cell culture medium at 30°C also appeared to increase the levels of detectable adherence to ME-180 cells when compared to that of bacteria from 30°C stationary-phase cultures grown in LB medium. Hence, the regulation of adherence appears to involve signals in addition to growth temperature. In Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the type III secreted protein, ExoS, has been shown to be induced in response to growth in cell culture medium (33), and it is perhaps likely that B. pseudomallei adhesins are similarly induced.
The relevance to pathogenesis of a highly adherent phenotype only when bacteria are grown at temperatures below 37°C certainly merits discussion. It is especially noteworthy that B. pseudomallei is an environmental bacterium, and infection is almost exclusively acquired from soil and water rather than from infected animals or humans. Taking into account the temperature regulation of adherence indicated by these experiments, we propose that this may be important for initial adherence to the host following an encounter from the environmental reservoir. A similar temperature regulation of adherence is shown by Bordetella bronchiseptica (28). In this case, the relative increase in adherence of bacteria grown at the lower temperature is less than that seen with B. pseudomallei, due mainly to the fact that B. bronchiseptica displays relatively high levels of adherence when grown at 37°C (28). Importantly, this temperature regulation of adherence in B. bronchiseptica is reflected by colonization levels in vivo, suggesting an important role in overcoming initial clearance mechanisms (5). The precise temperatures of typical environmental reservoirs of B. pseudomallei are unknown, and as such the potential relevance of such regulation is speculative. A major paradigm of virulence gene regulation is the ToxR regulon of Vibrio cholerae, and this system is influenced by a number of environmental stimuli, including temperature (30). Included in the ToxR regulon are the toxin coregulated pilus and accessory colonization factors (30). During in vitro growth of classical biotype strains in LB medium, the growth temperature for optimal expression of the regulon is 30°C (30), though this is not considered to be relevant to natural infections. Hence, it remains a formal possibility that the temperature regulation of adherence described herein is simply an artifact of in vitro culture of B. pseudomallei.
| Qualitative investigation of B. pseudomallei adherence using microscopy. |
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| Concluding remarks. |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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N.F.B. is an Australian Postgraduate Award recipient.
| FOOTNOTES |
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