Project description:Salmonella Heidelberg is currently the 9th common serovar and has more than twice the average incidence of blood infections in Salmonella. A recent Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak in chicken infected 634 people during 2013-2014, with a hospitalization rate of 38% and an invasive illness rate of 15%. While the company’s history suggested longstanding sanitation issues, the strains’ characteristics which may have contributed to the outbreak are unknown. We hypothesized that the outbreak strains of S. Heidelberg might possess enhanced stress tolerance or virulence capabilities. Consequently, we obtained nine food isolates collected during the outbreak investigation and several reference isolates and tested their tolerance to processing stresses, their ability to form biofilms, and their invasiveness in vitro. We further performed RNA-sequencing on three isolates with varying heat tolerance to determine the mechanism behind our isolates’ enhanced heat tolerance. Ultimately, we determined that (i) many Salmonella Heidelberg isolates associated with a foodborne outbreak have enhanced heat resistance (ii) Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak isolates have enhanced biofilm-forming ability under stressful conditions, compared to the reference strain (iii) exposure to heat stress may also increase Salmonella Heidelberg isolates’ antibiotic resistance and virulence capabilities and (iv) Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak-associated isolates are primed to better survive stress and cause illness. This data helps explain the severity and scope of the outbreak these isolates are associated with and can be used to inform regulatory decisions on Salmonella in poultry and to develop assays to screen isolates for stress tolerance and likelihood of causing severe illness.
Project description:Tenacibaculum maritimum, the etiological agent of tenacibaculosis in marine fish, constitutively secretes extracellular products (ECPs), which play a main role in virulence. However, their protein content has not been yet comprehensively studied. In this study a collection of 64 T. maritimum strains belonging to the four serotypes described so far (O1 to O4) was used to analyse the prevalence of extracellular proteolytic and lipolytic activities related to virulence. Results showed the existence of a large heterogeneity of the enzymatic capacity among serotype O4 isolates. Most notably, the ECPs of T. maritimum SP9.1 belonging to serotype O4 contain a large amount of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), which were characterized by electron microscopy and purified by successive steps of filtration and centrifugation. Total protein content of ECPs, and the proteins associated to OMVs and soluble fraction of the ECPs (S-ECPs) were identified by nLC-TIMS-QTOF. A total of 641 proteins were identified in ECPs including some virulence related factors, which were mainly found in one of the fractions, either in OMVs or S-ECPs. Outer membrane proteins such as TonB-dependent transporters and the T9SS-related proteins PorP, PorT and SprA appeared to be mainly associated with OMVs. By contrast, putative virulence factors such as sialidase SiaA, chondroitinase CslA, sphingomyelinase Sph, ceramidase Cer and collagenase Col were found only in the S-ECPs. These findings demonstrate that T. maritimum release, through surface blebbing, outer membrane vesicles that are enriched specifically in TonB-dependent siderophore transporters and proteins of the type IX secretion system. Interestingly, our results also showed that OMVs could play a role in virulence by promoting surface adhesion, biofilm formation, and maximizing cytotoxic effects of the ECPs. The T. maritimum secretome analysis provides insights into the extracellular products function and can constitute the basis for future studies aimed to elucidate the role of OMVs in the pathogenesis of fish tenacibaculosis.
Project description:A food-borne outbreak of haemorrhagic colitis (HC) and HUS caused by E. coli O103:H25 occurred in Norway, 2006. The outbreak included 17 registered cases, of which 10 developed HUS. The aim of this study was to characterize two E. coli O103:H25 isolates from this outbreak. Only one of the isolates carry the stx2 gene (by PCR). Since they have the same typing profile by typing method MLVA, we expect the isolates to have identical gene content except from an Stx2-encoding phage. Therefore, we further investigate whether the Stx2-encoding phage has any impact on the gene expression. Keywords: mixed, gene expression, comparative genomic hybridization