Project description:Salmonella enterica variants exhibit diverse host adaptation, outcome of infection, and associated risk to humans. Analysis of 6,335 Salmonella isolates recovered from integrated human-animal surveillance in Emilia Romagna region, Northern Italy, (human population ca 4,500,000), from 2012 to 2017 showed that Salmonella enterica serovar Derby constitutes a swine associated serovar in this epidemiological context while representing also a significant causative agent of human infections. Comparison of the distribution of subtypes of Salmonella Derby from human and swine identified isolates with a distinct PFGE profile that were significantly less isolated in human infections than in swine infections compared to all other subtypes. Here we show that isolates with this PFGE profile form a distinct phylogenetic sub-clade within Salmonella Derby and exhibit a marked reduction in invasion and replication in human epithelial cells but a relatively small reduction in swine epithelial cells, in line with the epidemiological evidence. A single missense mutation in hilD, that encodes the master-regulator of the Salmonella Pathogenicity Island 1 (SPI-1), was identified in this lineage of Salmonella Derby. Since SPI-1 encodes for a primary system of Salmonella invasion into epithelial cells, we investigated the role of the observed mutation in detail. We demonstrated that the missense mutation results in a loss of function of HilD that accounts for the reduced invasion and replication in human epithelial cells while showing a relatively small impact on the interaction with swine cells. This finding is suggestive of a mechanism of invasion alternative to SPI-1 in the Salmonella-swine combination
Project description:Natural epigenetic variation provides a source for the generation of phenotypic diversity, but to understand its contribution to phenotypic diversity, its interaction with genetic variation requires further investigation. MethylC-seq from naturally-occurring Arabidopsis accessions
