Meseguer María A, Alvarez Alberto, Rejas María T, Sánchez Carlos, Pérez-Díaz José C, Baquero Fernando
Department of Microbiology, Ramón y Cajal Hospital, National Institute of Health (INSALUD), Madrid 28034, Spain.
Infect Genet Evol. 2003 May;3(1):47-55. doi: 10.1016/s1567-1348(02)00151-x.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae has classically been considered an extracellular (or membrane-associated) organism. Nevertheless, the recently elucidated genomic structure of this pathogen strongly suggest that this organism may have been subjected to the process of reductive genetic evolution which is characteristic of intracellular bacteria. We studied the Mycoplasma pneumoniae RYC15989 strain, recovered from a pericardial biopsy sample from a patient with atypical pneumonia and acute pericarditis. The interaction of this strain with human hepatocytes Hep-G2 and mouse neuroblastoma N2-A cell lines was investigated. Confocal laser scanning microscopy and electronic microscopy evidence is presented of the intracellular location of fluorochrome-labelled Mycoplasma pneumoniae in cell lines infected with the organism in vitro. This finding provides preliminary evidence of cellular invasive capacity of Mycoplasma pneumoniae and casts some new light on the pathogenic potential of Mycoplasma pneumoniae in host infection.
肺炎支原体传统上被认为是一种胞外（或膜相关）生物体。然而，最近阐明的这种病原体的基因组结构强烈表明，该生物体可能经历了细胞内细菌特有的还原性基因进化过程。我们研究了从一名非典型肺炎和急性心包炎患者的心包活检样本中分离出的肺炎支原体RYC15989菌株。研究了该菌株与人类肝癌细胞Hep-G2和小鼠神经母细胞瘤N2-A细胞系的相互作用。本文提供了共聚焦激光扫描显微镜和电子显微镜证据，证明了在体外感染该生物体的细胞系中，荧光染料标记的肺炎支原体位于细胞内。这一发现为肺炎支原体的细胞侵袭能力提供了初步证据，并为肺炎支原体在宿主感染中的致病潜力提供了一些新的线索。
