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Modeling tuberculous meningitis in zebrafish using Mycobacterium marinum.

ABSTRACT: Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is one of the most severe extrapulmonary manifestations of tuberculosis, with a high morbidity and mortality. Characteristic pathological features of TBM are Rich foci, i.e. brain- and spinal-cord-specific granulomas formed after hematogenous spread of pulmonary tuberculosis. Little is known about the early pathogenesis of TBM and the role of Rich foci. We have adapted the zebrafish model of Mycobacterium marinum infection (zebrafish-M. marinum model) to study TBM. First, we analyzed whether TBM occurs in adult zebrafish and showed that intraperitoneal infection resulted in granuloma formation in the meninges in 20% of the cases, with occasional brain parenchyma involvement. In zebrafish embryos, bacterial infiltration and clustering of infected phagocytes was observed after infection at three different inoculation sites: parenchyma, hindbrain ventricle and caudal vein. Infection via the bloodstream resulted in the formation of early granulomas in brain tissue in 70% of the cases. In these zebrafish embryos, infiltrates were located in the proximity of blood vessels. Interestingly, no differences were observed when embryos were infected before or after early formation of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), indicating that bacteria are able to cross this barrier with relatively high efficiency. In agreement with this observation, infected zebrafish larvae also showed infiltration of the brain tissue. Upon infection of embryos with an M. marinum ESX-1 mutant, only small clusters and scattered isolated phagocytes with high bacterial loads were present in the brain tissue. In conclusion, our adapted zebrafish-M. marinum infection model for studying granuloma formation in the brain will allow for the detailed analysis of both bacterial and host factors involved in TBM. It will help solve longstanding questions on the role of Rich foci and potentially contribute to the development of better diagnostic tools and therapeutics.

SUBMITTER: van Leeuwen LM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4142731 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Modeling tuberculous meningitis in zebrafish using Mycobacterium marinum.

van Leeuwen Lisanne M LM van der Kuip Martijn M Youssef Sameh A SA de Bruin Alain A Bitter Wilbert W van Furth A Marceline AM van der Sar Astrid M AM

Disease models & mechanisms 20140704 9

Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is one of the most severe extrapulmonary manifestations of tuberculosis, with a high morbidity and mortality. Characteristic pathological features of TBM are Rich foci, i.e. brain- and spinal-cord-specific granulomas formed after hematogenous spread of pulmonary tuberculosis. Little is known about the early pathogenesis of TBM and the role of Rich foci. We have adapted the zebrafish model of Mycobacterium marinum infection (zebrafish-M. marinum model) to study TBM. F ...[more]

PMID: 24997190

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Project description:Novel high-throughput deep sequencing technology has dramatically changed the way that the functional complexity of transcriptomes can be studied. Here we report on the first use of this technology to gain insight into the wide range of transcriptional alterations that are associated with an infectious disease process. Using Solexa/IlluminaM-bM-^@M-^Ys digital gene expression (DGE) system, a tag-based transcriptome sequencing method, we investigated mycobacterium-induced transcriptome changes in a model vertebrate species, the zebrafish. Our DGE data substantiate recent RNA-seq results from other models indicating a much larger extent of genome transcription than previously thought, and demonstrate that the host response to bacterial infection adds a further degree of complexity to the transcriptome. We obtained a sequencing depth of over 5 million tags per sample with strong correlation between replicates. Tag mapping indicated that mycobacterium-infected adult zebrafish express over 70% of all genes represented in transcript databases. Comparison of our DGE data with a previous multiplatform microarray analysis showed that both types of technologies identified regulation of similar functional groups of genes, more specifically the up-regulation of different classes of immune response genes concomitant with a broad down-regulation of metabolic genes. However, the unbiased nature of DGE analysis provided insights that microarray analysis could not have achieved. As demonstrated here, DGE data are useful for the verification of predicted gene models and allowed us to detect mycobacterium-regulated switching between different transcript isoforms. Moreover, genomic mapping of infection-induced DGE tags revealed novel transcript forms for which any previous EST-based evidence of expression was lacking. Adult male zebrafish were infected by intraperitoneal inoculation with approximately 1x 10-3 M. marinum bacteria. All four infected fish were sacrificed when they showed overt signs of fish tuberculosis, including lethargy, skin ulcers and extensive granuloma formation in organs such as liver and kidney. Histological examination of fish from the same experiments confirmed that the pathology of infected fish corresponded to fish tuberculosis and that no characteristics of the disease were present in the control fish. For DGE analysis RNA samples from the four control adult zebrafish (c1,c2,c3,c4) were pooled, and RNA samples from the four M.marinum-infected adult zebrafish (i1,i2,i3,i4) were pooled. Before pooling the individual RNA samples had been checked by microarray analysis for correlation between biological replicates.

Dataset Information

Modeling tuberculous meningitis in zebrafish using Mycobacterium marinum.

Publications

Modeling tuberculous meningitis in zebrafish using Mycobacterium marinum.

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