Skip to main content
Log in

Cohabitation within mice of Salmonella typhimurium seqA mutant increases its virulence

  • Short Communication
  • Published:
World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The efficacy of a vaccine is conditioned by its capacity to elicit a protective immune response. The principal safety concerns of live vaccine are virulence reversion. The aim of this work was to evaluate the virulence of Salmonella typhimurium seqA mutant after cohabitation with mice. Our results indicated that LD50 of hosted strains were at least twofold lower than those of parental strains. Also, the in vivo competition assays have showed that the development of a systemic infection was most obvious for recovered strains than for control strains. In addition, the number of hosted mutants colonizing spleen and liver was relatively higher than control strains. Adhesion and invasion experiments were performed in order to compare the pathogenicity of Salmonella. For instance recovered-mutant attached to epithelial cells (KB cells) better than parental strains. According to these results, we report that in vivo adaptation of Salmonella typhimurium seqA mutants can increase their virulence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

References

  • Brendler T, Austin S (1999) Binding of SeqA protein to DNA requires interaction between two or more complexes bound to separate hemimethylated GATC sequences. EMBO J 18(8):2304–2310

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cánovas D, Fletcher SA, Hayashi M, Csonka LN (2001) Role of trehalose in growth at high temperature of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. J Bacteriol 183:3365–3371

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carmen T, Eleaor SM (1993) Osmolarity and growth phase overlap in regulation of Salmonella typhi adherence to and invasion of human intestinal cells. Infect Immun 61:3084–3089

    Google Scholar 

  • Chatti A, Landoulsi A Acid pre-adaptation enhances virulence of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium dam mutant. Pathol Biol (in press)

  • Chatti A, Daghfous D, Landoulsi A (2007) Effect of seqA mutation on Salmonella typhimurium virulence. J Infect 54:241–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatti A, Daghfous D, Landoulsi A (2008) Effect of repeated in vivo passage (in mice) on Salmonella typhimurium dam mutant virulence and fitness. Pathol Biol 56:121–124

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chen S, Rosner MH, Calvo JM (2001) Leucine-regulated self association of leucine-responsive regulatory protein (Lrp) from Escherichia coli. J Mol Biol 312:625–635

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chen L, Paulsen DB, Scruggs DW, Banes MM, Reeks BY, Lawrence ML (2003) Alteration of DNA adenine methylase (Dam) activity in Pasteurella multocida causes increased spontaneous mutation frequency and attenuation in mice. Microbiology 149:2283–2290

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Correnti J, Munster V, Chan T, Woude M (2002) Dam-dependent phase variation of Ag43 in Escherichia coli is altered in a seqA mutant. Mol Microbiol 44:521–532

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Daghfous D, Chatti A, Marzouk B, Landoulsi A (2006) Phospholipid changes in seqA and dam mutants of Escherichia coli. C R Biol 329:271–276

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Freiesleben UV, Rasmussen KV, Schaechter M (1994) SeqA limits DnaA activity in replication from oriC in Escherichia coli. Mol Microbiol 14:763–772

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Heithoff DM, Sinsheimer RL, Low DA, Mahan MJ (1999) An essential role for DNA adenine methylation in bacterial virulence. Science 284:967–970

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Heithoff DM, Enioutina EY, Daynes RA, Sinsheimer RL, Low DA, Mahan MJ (2001) Salmonella DNA adenine methylase mutants confer cross-protective immunity. Infect Immun 69:6725–6730

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Heithoff DM, Badie G, Julio SM, Enioutina EY, Daynes RA, Sinsheimer RL, Mahan MJ (2007) In vivo-selected mutations in methyl-directed mismatch repair suppress the virulence attenuation of Salmonella dam mutant strains following intraperitoneal, but not oral, infection of Naïve mice. J Bacteriol 189:4708–4717

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson JR, Kuskowski M (2000) Clonal origin, virulence factors, and virulence. Infect Immun 68:424–425

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Leyer GJ, Johnson EA (1993) Acid adaptation induces cross-protection against environmental stresses in Salmonella typhimurium. Appl Environ Microbiol 59:1942–1947

    Google Scholar 

  • Lobner-Olesen A, Marinus M, Hansen F (2003) Role of SeqA and Dam in Escherichia coli gene expression: a global/microarray analysis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100:4672–4677

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Lu M, Campbell JL, Boye E, Kleckner N (1994) SeqA: a negative modulator of replication initiation in E. coli. Cell 77:413–426

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • MacGraw B, Marinus MG (1980) Isolation and characterization of Dam + revertants and suppressor mutations that modify secondary phenotypes of dam—strains of Escherichia coli K-12. Mol Gen Genet 178:309–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marinus MG (1996) Methylation of DNA. In: Neidhardt FC et al (eds) Escherichia coli and Salmonella: cellular and molecular biology, vol 1, 2nd edn. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC, pp 782–791

    Google Scholar 

  • Picard B, Garcia JS, Gouriou S, Duriez P, Brahimi N, Bingen E, Elion J, Denamur E (1999) The link between phylogeny and virulence in Escherichia coli extraintestinal infection. Infect Immun 67:546–553

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Prieto AI, Jakomin M, Segura I, Pucciarelli MG, Ramos-Morales F, Garcia-del Portillo F, Casadesus J (2007) The GATC-binding protein SeqA is required for bile resistance and virulence in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. J Bacteriol 189:8496–8502

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Reed LJ, Muench HA (1938) A simple method of estimating fifty percent end points. Am J Trop Med Hyg 27:493–497

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson VL, Oyston PC, Titball RW (2005) A dam mutant of Yersinia pestis is attenuated and induces protection against plague. FEMS Microbiol Lett 252:251–256

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Roy MF, Malo D (2002) Genetic regulation of host responses to Salmonella infection in mice. Genes Immun 3:381–383

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rychlik I, Barrow PA (2005) Salmonella stress management and its relevance to behaviour during intestinal colonisation and infection. FEMS Microbiol Rev 29:1021–1040

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Slater S, Wold S, Lu M, Boye E, Skarstad K, Kleckner N (1995) E. coli SeqA protein binds oriC in two different methyl-modulated reactions appropriate to its roles in DNA replication initiation and origin sequestration. Cell 82:927–936

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Slominska AW, Konopa G, Skarstad K, Wegrzyn G (2001) SeqA, the Escherichia coli origin sequestration protein, is also a specific transcription factor. Mol Microbiol 40:1371–1379

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor VL, Titball RW, Oyston PC (2005) Oral immunization with a dam mutant of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis protects against plague. Microbiology 151:1919–1926

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wion D, Casadesús J (2006) N6-methyl-adenine: an epigenetic signal for DNA protein interactions. Nat Rev Microbiol 4:183–192

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by: «Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur; Faculté des Sciences de Bizerte-Département de Biologie». We thank Mr. Laszlo N. Csonka (Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1392, USA) for providing wild-type strain LT2 and TL3283 (seqA101::MudJ).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chatti Abdelwaheb.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nadia, M., Abdelwaheb, C. & Ahmed, L. Cohabitation within mice of Salmonella typhimurium seqA mutant increases its virulence. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 26, 183–187 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-009-0141-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-009-0141-0

Keywords

Navigation