Growth of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis in human plasma: impacts on virulence and metabolic gene expression

Abstract

Background: In man, infection by the Gram-negative enteropathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is usually limited to the terminal ileum. However, in immunocompromised patients, the microorganism may disseminate from the digestive tract and thus cause a systemic infection with septicemia.

The Small RNA Chaperone Hfq Is Required for the Virulence of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

“…Y. pseudotuberculosis is very closely related to Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague (6,53). Yersiniosis caused by Y. pseudotuberculosis is characterized by ileitis, mesenteric lymphadenitis, fever, and diarrhea (31,37,41), and the presence of previous medical conditions can increase the severity of the disease (49). Y. pseudotuberculosis is transmitted through the fecal-oral route, and it has been shown in mice that colonization of the Peyer's patches occurs shortly after the bacteria enter the intestinal lumen (30).…”

The importance of the magnesium transporter MgtB for virulence of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Yersinia pestis

“…While Yersinia are traditionally considered intracellular pathogens, the majority of bacteria during an infection are extracellular (Simonet et al, 1990), and the role of Mg 2+ transporters during extracellular growth in vivo has yet to be determined. However, mgtB was not identified as being upregulated in Y. pseudotuberculosis or Y. pestis following incubation in human plasma (Chauvaux et al, 2007;Rosso et al, 2008), and indeed for Y. pestis, mgtB appeared to be slightly downregulated (Chauvaux et al, 2007). The normal mean level of Mg 2+ in the serum of BALB/c mice is reported as 1.38±0.12 mM (Sun et al, 2009a) and would not therefore be expected to be restrictive.…”

In silico comparison of Yersinia pestis and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis transcriptomes reveals a higher expression level of crucial virulence determinants in the plague bacillus

“…Raw data were collected from macroarray hybridizations previously performed with Y. pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis cDNA samples (Chauvaux et al, 2007;Rosso et al, 2008). Briefly, Y. pestis CO92 and Y. pseudotuberculosis IP32953 were grown in parallel in Luria Bertani (LB) medium or in decomplemented human plasma (i.e.…”

“…Individual transcriptome analyses (i.e. mRNA expression at the whole-genome level) of either Y. pestis or Y. pseudotuberculosis grown under 8 distinct conditions have previously been performed and revealed broad regulatory changes across the entire genome of each strain (Chauvaux et al, 2007;Rosso et al, 2008). In this study, we decided to take advantage of the fact that these 2 analyses were done simultaneously under strictly identical conditions for the 2 species, to perform an in silico whole-genome meta-analysis of the 2 species expression profiles.…”