“…The use of bioluminescent bacteria, such as E. coli-pAKl-lux or E. coZi!-Xenl4, coupled with bioluminescence imaging technologies, may represent an efficient model for achieving a greater understanding of the pathogenesis of uterine and placental infections in domestic species. Some studies have established positive relationships between bioluminescent signals and bacterial populations for gram-negative bacteria (r = 0.99; Kadurugamuwa et al, 2005), whereas other investigators have described and validated bioluminescent bacterial models, both in vitro (Moulton et al, 2006(Moulton et al, , 2009c and ex vivo (Moulton et al, 2009a,d;Curbelo et al, 2010). More recently, studies have reported the use of bioluminescent reporters and biophotonic imaging technology to study mechanisms of pathogenesis of such pathogens as Staphylococcus aureus (Kuklin et al, 2003), Aspergillus fmnigatus (Brock et al, 2008), Listeria monocytogenes (Konjufca and Miller, 2009), E. coli (Foucault et al, 2010), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Andreu et al, 2010); however, these studies have focused on the use of the mouse model.…”