Project description:Salmonella enterica causes serious global burden of morbidity and mortality and is a major cause of infant bacteremia in sub Saharan Africa. Diseases caused by Salmonella are treatable with antibiotics but successful antibiotic treatment has become difficult due to antimicrobial resistance. An effective vaccine together with public health effort may therefore be a better strategy to control these infections. Protective immunity against Salmonella depends primarily on T cell-mediated immune responses and therefore identifying relevant T cell antigens is necessary for Salmonella vaccine development. Our laboratory has used an immunoproteomics approach to identify Chlamydia T cell antigens that exhibited significant protection against Chlamydia infection in mice. In this study, we infected murine bone marrow derived dendritic cells from C57BL/6 mice with Salmonella enterica strain SL1344 followed by isolation of MHC class I and II- molecules and elution of bound peptides. The sequences of the peptides were then identified using tandem mass spectrometry. We identified 87 MHC class II and 23 MHC class I Salmonella derived peptides. Four of 12 peptides stimulated IFN-? production by CD4 T cells from the spleens of mice with persistent Salmonella infection. These antigens will be useful for Salmonella immunobiology research and are potential Salmonella vaccine candidates.
Project description:InvF ChIP-chip on Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium SL1344 using anti-Myc antibody against strain with chromosomally 9Myc-tagged InvF (IP samples) and wildtype strain (mock IP samples) Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium causes a range of diseases from self-limiting gastroenteritis to life-threatening systemic infections. Its complex infection process is initiated by the invasion of the intestinal epithelial monolayer by means of a type three secretion system. InvF is one of the key regulators governing the invasion of epithelial cells. By mapping the InvF regulon, i.e. locating its direct target genes, the gene network underlying invasion can be further examined, including identifying possible new effector-encoding genes. In order to map the InvF regulon, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation combined with tiling microarray analysis (ChIP-chip) and compared expression of the identified target genes in an invF mutant and a wildtype strain. In addition, the promoter regions of these target genes were searched for the presence of an InvF recognition site. Finally, a query-driven biclustering method, combined with a microarray compendium containing publically available S. Typhimurium gene expression data, was applied as an in silico validation technique for functional relatedness between newly identified target genes and known invasion genes. As expected, under invasion inducing conditions, InvF activates the expression of invasion chaperone encoding sicA and the effector-encoding genes sopB, sopE, sopE2 and sopA by binding their promoter region. Newly identified InvF targets are steB, encoding a secreted effector, and STM1239. The presence of an InvF recognition site in the promoter regions of these target genes further supports this observation. In addition, the query-driven biclustering method revealed similarities in expression profiles between STM1239 and known InvF regulated invasion genes over a range of experimental conditions. In conclusion, we here deliver the first evidence for direct binding of InvF to the promoter regions of sopA and sopE2, and associate genes encoding a secreted effector (steB) and a putative novel effector (STM1239) with the Salmonella invasion regulator InvF.
Project description:Cell to cell communication in bacteria to regulate various cellular processes with respect to their population density is termed quorum sensing and is achieved using signaling molecules called autoinducers. LuxS, which is involved in the synthesis of the autoinducer molecule-2 (AI-2), is conserved in several Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria including the enteric pathogen Salmonella Typhimurium. Genes that are regulated by luxS in S. Typhimurium were identified using microarrays and RNA samples from wild type S. Typhimurium and its isogenic luxS mutant, in two growth conditions (presence and absence of glucose), and at two different time points (mid-log and early-stationary phases). Minimal differential gene expression was observed in the presence of glucose. In the absence of both luxS and glucose, a total of 1560 genes were differentially expressed and 1361 genes were identified as luxS/AI-2-regulated at the mid-log phase and 199 genes at the early-stationary phase. Quantitative real-time PCR was performed on selected genes to validate the microarray results. These results suggest that although the expression of the luxS gene in S. Typhimurium is independent of the growth condition, its role in the production of AI-2 depends on the growth condition. It was found that luxS/AI-2 plays a vital role in a variety of processes such as metabolism, virulence gene expression, motility, transcription and translation. Keywords: Salmonella Typhimurium, quorum sensing, luxS mutant, autoinducer-2
Project description:Salmonella is an important enteric pathogen that causes a spectrum of diseases varying from mild gastroenteritis to life threatening typhoid fever. Salmonella does not have lac operon. However, E. Coli, Salmonella’s close relative, has lac operon. Being an enteric pathogen like E. coli, Salmonella will also benefit from lac operon. Then, why Salmonella has lost lac operon?. To address this question, lacI, an important component of lac operon was expressed in Salmonella via pTrc99A plasmid. As a control, pTrc99A without lacI was also expressed in Salmonella. The effect of LacI on the transcription profile of Salmonella was analyzed using microarray technique.
Project description:This experiment set includes 64 arrays representing 26 serovars and strains of Salmonella spp. including many representatives of subspecies I, Arizona from subsp. IIIa, and S. bongori from subsp. V. The genomic DNA from all strains were labeled with Cy5 and hybridized against an equal amount (1.5 ug) of S. typhimurium SL1344 reference genomic DNA that was labeled with Cy3, all on an S. typhimurium SL1344 spotted DNA microarray. Most of the arrays are present in triplicate to account for variability in probe generation, hybridization, and slide quality. Several are represented in duplicate, and a few without any replicates. Set of arrays organized by shared biological context, such as organism, tumors types, processes, etc. Keywords: Logical Set