Role of type 1 and type 3 fimbriae in Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilm formation

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Kim B Barken¹  Karen A Krogfelt²  Carsten Struve²  Casper Schroll² 

[1] Centre for Biomedical Microbiology, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark;Department of Microbiological Surveillance and Research, Statens Serum Institut, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark;

关键词: Wild Type Strain;    Flow Chamber;    Yellow Fluorescent Protein;    Planktonic Cell;    Cyan Fluorescent Protein;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2180-10-179

 received in 2010-01-15, accepted in 2010-06-23,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundKlebsiella pneumoniae is an important gram-negative opportunistic pathogen causing primarily urinary tract infections, respiratory infections, and bacteraemia. The ability of bacteria to form biofilms on medical devices, e.g. catheters, has a major role in development of many nosocomial infections. Most clinical K. pneumoniae isolates express two types of fimbrial adhesins, type 1 fimbriae and type 3 fimbriae. In this study, we characterized the role of type 1 and type 3 fimbriae in K. pneumoniae biofilm formation.ResultsIsogenic fimbriae mutants of the clinical K. pneumoniae isolate C3091 were constructed, and their ability to form biofilm was investigated in a flow cell system by confocal scanning laser microscopy. The wild type strain was found to form characteristic biofilm and development of K. pneumoniae biofilm occurred primarily by clonal growth, not by recruitment of planktonic cells. Type 1 fimbriae did not influence biofilm formation and the expression of type 1 fimbriae was found to be down-regulated in biofilm forming cells. In contrast, expression of type 3 fimbriae was found to strongly promote biofilm formation.ConclusionBy use of well defined isogenic mutants we found that type 3 fimbriae, but not type 1 fimbriae, strongly promote biofilm formation in K. pneumoniae C3091. As the vast majority of clinical K. pneumoniae isolates express type 3 fimbriae, this fimbrial adhesin may play a significant role in development of catheter associated K. pneumoniae infections.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Schroll et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. 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.