Novel screening assay for in vivo selection of Klebsiella pneumoniae genes promoting gastrointestinal colonisation

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Karen A Krogfelt¹  Erik J Boll¹  Lene N Nielsen²  Carsten Struve³ 

[1]Department of Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, DK-2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

[2]Department of Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, DK-2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

[3]Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark

[4]Department of Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, DK-2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

[5]WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Escherichia and Klebsiella, Statens Serum Institut, DK-2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

关键词: Klebsiella pneumoniae;    Genomic library;    Mouse model of gastrointestinal colonisation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2180-12-201

 received in 2012-02-21, accepted in 2012-09-06,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundKlebsiella pneumoniae is an important opportunistic pathogen causing pneumonia, sepsis and urinary tract infections. Colonisation of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a key step in the development of infections; yet the specific factors important for K. pneumoniae to colonize and reside in the GI tract of the host are largely unknown. To identify K. pneumoniae genes promoting GI colonisation, a novel genomic-library-based approach was employed.ResultsScreening of a K. pneumoniae C3091 genomic library, expressed in E. coli strain EPI100, in a mouse model of GI colonisation led to the positive selection of five clones containing genes promoting persistent colonisation of the mouse GI tract. These included genes encoding the global response regulator ArcA; GalET of the galactose operon; and a cluster of two putative membrane-associated proteins of unknown function. Both ArcA and GalET are known to be involved in metabolic pathways in Klebsiella but may have additional biological actions beneficial to the pathogen. In support of this, GalET was found to confer decreased bile salt sensitivity to EPI100.ConclusionsThe present work establishes the use of genomic-library-based in vivo screening assays as a valuable tool for identification and characterization of virulence factors in K. pneumoniae and other bacterial pathogens.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Boll et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.