Host Environment Shapes S. aureus Social Behavior as Revealed by Microscopy Pattern Formation and Dynamic Aggregation Analysis

Microorganisms

Paolo Savadori¹  Alessio Franci²  Natsuko Rivera-Yoshida²  Marta Bottagisio³  Elena De Vecchi³  Alessandro Bidossi³  Davide Attanasi³ 

[1] Department of Endodontics, IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, 20161 Milan, Italy;Department of Mathematics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City 04510, Mexico;Laboratory of Clinical Chemistry and Microbiology, IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, 20161 Milan, Italy;

关键词: S. aureus;    bacterial aggregates;    biofilm;    bacterial development;    orthopedic infections;    periprosthetic joints;   

DOI  :  10.3390/microorganisms10030526

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Understanding how bacteria adapt their social behavior to environmental changes is of crucial importance from both biological and clinical perspectives. Staphylococcus aureus is among the most common infecting agents in orthopedics, but its recalcitrance to the immune system and to antimicrobial treatments in the physiological microenvironment are still poorly understood. By means of optical and confocal microscopy, image pattern analysis, and mathematical modeling, we show that planktonic biofilm-like aggregates and sessile biofilm lifestyles are two co-existing and interacting phases of the same environmentally adaptive developmental process and that they exhibit substantial differences when S. aureus is grown in physiological fluids instead of common lab media. Physicochemical properties of the physiological microenvironment are proposed to be the key determinants of these differences. Besides providing a new tool for biofilm phenotypic analysis, our results suggest new insights into the social behavior of S. aureus in physiological conditions and highlight the inadequacy of commonly used lab media for both biological and clinical studies of bacterial development.

【 授权许可】

Unknown