Project description:The precise mechanism and effects of antibiotics in host gene expression and immunomodulation in MRSA infection is unknown. Using a well characterized Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolate USA300 in a murine model of infection, we determined that linezolid and vancomycin induced differential production of bacterial toxins and host cytokines, differences in host gene expression, and differences in immunomodulators during MRSA bloodstream infection. A total of 35 A/J mice, categorized into seven groups (no infection; no infection with linezolid; no infection with vancomycin; 2 hour post-infection (hpi) S. aureus; 24 hpi S. aureus; 24 hpi S. aureus with linezolid; and 24 hpi S. aureus with vancomycin), were used in this study. Mice were injected with USA300 (6 x 106 CFU/g via i.p. route), then intravenously treated with linezolid (25 mg/kg) or vancomycin (25 mg/kg) at 2 hpi. Control and S. aureus infected mice were euthanized at each time point (2 h or 24h) following injection. Whole blood RNA was used for microarray; three cytokines and two S. aureus toxins [PantonValentine Leukocidin (PVL) and alpha hemolysin] were quantified in mouse serum by ELISA. S. aureus CFUs were significantly reduced in blood and kidney after linezolid or vancomycin treatment in S. aureus-infected mice. In vivo IL-1M-NM-2 in mouse serum was significantly reduced in both linezolid (p=0.001) and vancomycin (p=0.006) treated mice compared to untreated ones. IL-6 was significantly reduced only in linezolid treated (p<0.001) but not in vancomycin treated mice. However, another proinflammatory cytokine, TNF-M-NM-1, did not exhibit altered levels in either linezolid or vancomycin treated mice (p=0.3 and p=0.51 respectively). In vivo level of bacterial toxin, Panton-Valentine leukocidin, in mouse serum was significantly reduced only in linezolid treated mice (p=0.02) but not in vancomycin treated mice. There was no significant effect of either treatment in in vivo level of alpha hemolysin production. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering using the gene expression data from 35 microarrays revealed distinct clustering based on infection status and treatment group. Study of the antibiotic-specific difference in gene expression identified the number of genes uniquely expressed in response to S. aureus infection, infection with linezolid treatment, and infection with vancomycin treatment. Pathway associations study for the differentially expressed genes in each comparison group (Control vs. 24 h S. aureus infection, 24 h S. aureus infection vs. 24 h S. aureus linezolid, and 24 h S. aureus infection vs. 24 h S. aureus vancomycin) in mice using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) identified toll-like receptor signaling pathway to be common to every comparison groups studied. Glycerolipid metabolism pathway was uniquely associated only with linezolid treatment comparison group. The findings of this study provide the evidence that protein synthesis inhibitor like linezolid does a better job in treating MRSA sepsis compared to cell wall acting antibiotics like vancomycin. To identify differences in host gene expression in a murine sepsis model treated with a) linezolid and b) vancomycin, we used whole blood gene expression (RNA) signatures from A/J inbred mice infected with USA 300 MRSA to evaluate differences in host gene expression among mice treated with linezolid and vancomycin. We used 5 RNA samples from MRSA-infected, linezolid- or vancomycin-treated mice. A total of 7 experimental groups have been employed: 1) Uninfected control group: (negative controls). 2) Uninfected, linezolid-treated group: Uninfected, linezolid-treated mice. 3) Uninfected vancomycin-treated group: Uninfected, vancomycin-treated mice. 4) Infected control group (positive control 2 h) MRSA-infected, untreated mice. 5) Infected control group (positive control 24 h): MRSA-infected, untreated mice. 6) Infected linezolid group: MRSA-infected, linezolid-treated mice. 7) Infected vancomycin group: MRSA-infected, vancomycin-treated mice.

Project description:Regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) are now considered as major players in many physiological and adaptive responses in pathogenic bacteria. sRNAs have been extensively studied in Gram-negative bacteria, but less information is available in Gram-positive pathogens. There is a spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) opportunistic organisms, grouped as “ESKAPE” pathogens, which comprise enterococci, a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections and outbreaks with emergence of MDR isolates, especially vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREF). Note that no information about sRNA expression is known in this major opportunistic pathogen. By transcriptomic and genomic analyses using E. faecium Aus0004 reference strain, 249 transcribed IGRs, including sRNA candidates, were detected and, using a series of cut-offs, this set was lowered down to 54 sRNAs while 7 that were predicted based on comparative sequence analysis. RNA-seq was performed with and without subinhibitory concentrations (SIC) of daptomycin, a cyclic lipopeptide antibiotic used for VREF infections. Under daptomycin SIC exposure, 260 genes (9.1% of the genome) had a significant alteration of expression including 80 upregulated genes and 180 downregulated genes. Among the repressed genes, a large proportion (55%) coded for proteins involved in carbohydrate and transport metabolism. Also, we focused on the 9 sRNAs exhibiting the highest expression, and all of them were confirmed as expressed along bacterial growth by Northern blots and qPCR. Out of these 9 sRNAs, four had significantly lower or higher expression in the presence of daptomycin SIC, and therefore responded to antibiotic exposure. Finally, we also tested the expression of these 9 sRNAs in a collection of isogenic Aus0004 mutants with increasing levels of daptomycin resistance, and we observed by qPCR that some sRNAs had a significantly modified expression in daptomycin resistance mutants. It highlights the significant implication of some of the E. faecium sRNAs in the early steps of the development of daptomycin resistance. This is the first experimental genome-wide sRNA identification in Gram-positive E. faecium, a leading cause of hospital acquired infections.

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