The adhesion of classic enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strains of human origin to isolated human small intestinal enterocytes and cultured small intestinal mucosa was investigated. An adhesion assay with isolated human enterocytes prepared from duodenal biopsy samples was developed and tested with EPEC strains known to cause diarrhea in healthy adult volunteers. In the assay a mean of 53 and 55% of enterocytes had brush border-adherent E. coli E2348 (O127;H6) and E851 (O142:H6), respectively, whereas the value for a nonpathogenic control strain and a plasmid-cured derivative of strain E2348 was 0%. A collection of 17 EPEC strains was also tested for the ability to colonize cultured human duodenal mucosa. Extensive colonization occurred with 13 strains, including serogroups O55, O86, O111, O114, O119, O127, O128, and O142; and in each case electron microscopic examination of colonized mucosa revealed the characteristic histopathological lesion reported by others in natural and experimental EPEC infections. EPEC strains were seen to adhere intimately to the enterocyte surface, causing localized destruction of microvilli. The plasmid-cured derivative of strain E2348, which colonized cultured mucosa much less efficiently than the parent strain, nevertheless produced an identical lesion, indicating that plasmid-encoded factors are not essential for adhesion and the brush border-damaging property of EPEC.

Summary.A collection of 44 Campylobacter isolates (37 C. jejuni and seven C. coli) from children with colitis (21 strains) or watery diarrhoea (23 strains) was analysed for toxin production, association with HeLa cells, and invasion of differentiated Caco-2 cell cultures. There was no obvious association of clinical symptoms with species, biotype or enterotoxin production. All colitis strains and most of the isolates from watery diarrhoea were cytotoxic for Chinese hamster ovary cells. Measurements of bacterial association indices with HeLa cells varied with time, and were considered to be unreliable for discriminating between isolates from the two diagnostic groups. Statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups (all colitis strains and 65% of strains from non-inflammatory diarrhoea) with respect to invasion of both HeLa and Caco-2 cell monolayers. However, among the strains from non-inflammatory diarrhoea that did invade, numbers of internalised bacteria were similar to the range observed for colitis strains. Of the colitis strains, 86 % were able to transcytose through polarised Caco-2 monolayers grown on filters, compared with 48% of isolates from non-inflammatory disease. We propose the use of Caco-2 cells as a model for studying invasion of intestinal epithelia by C. jejuni and C. coli.

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The material properties and photoelectrochemical performance of compact thin-film InVO4 photoanodes prepared by spray pyrolysis are investigated. Nearly phase-pure orthorhombic InVO4 can be obtained by a postdeposition anneal treatment in air between 450−550 °C. Optical absorption spectra indicate that InVO4 has an indirect bandgap of ∼3.2 eV with a pronounced sub-bandgap absorption starting at ∼2.5 eV. A dielectric constant of 50 and a flatband potential of −0.04 V vs RHE are determined, which confirms that this material is able to evolve hydrogen. Few shallow donors are present in this material, which is markedly different from what is usually observed for simple binary oxides. The main photocurrent response occurs in the UV (<400 nm) and the incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency is less than 1%. The impedance data show that the poor photo response is due to a high density of deep donors and a concomitantly small depletion layer. The visible light absorption of InVO4 is attributed to the presence of ionized deep donors in the space charge region of the material, which explains why InVO4 powders show a much stronger visible light absorption than thin films. The defect-chemical origin of the deep donor state is discussed and some general considerations for the use of ternary and more complex metal oxides as photoelectrodes are outlined.