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Infect. Immun. doi:10.1128/IAI.01117-06
Copyright (c) 2006, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

A Biological Trojan Horse: Antigen 43 Provides Specific Bacterial Uptake and Survival in Human Neutrophils

Sara Fexby, Thomas Bjarnsholt, Peter strup Jensen, Viktoria Roos, Niels Høiby, Michael Givskov, and Per Klemm^*

Center for Biomedical Microbiology, BioCentrum-DTU, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark; and Department of Clinical Microbiology, Rigshospitalet, Denmark

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: pkl{at}biocentrum.dtu.dk.

	Abstract

Escherichia coli is a versatile pathogen causing millions of infections in humans every year. This bacterium can form multi-cellular aggregates when it expresses a self-associating protein, Ag43, on its surface. We have discovered that Ag43-expressing E. coli cells are efficiently taken up by human defense cells, PMNs, in an opsonin-independent manner. Surprisingly, the phagocytosed bacteria were not immediately killed but resided as tight aggregates within the PMNs. Our observations indicate that Ag43-mediated uptake and survival in PMNs constitute a mechanism to subvert one of the primary defense mechanisms of the human body.

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