Rashid Rebecca A, Tabata Tami A, Oatley Melissa J, Besser Thomas E, Tarr Phillip I, Moseley Steve L
Department of Microbiology, University of Washington, 1959 N.E. Pacific St., Mail Stop 357242, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Infect Immun. 2006 Jul;74(7):4142-8. doi: 10.1128/IAI.00299-06.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a commensal organism in cattle, but it is a pathogen in humans. This differential expression of virulence suggests that specific virulence factors are regulated differently in human and bovine hosts. To test this hypothesis, relative real-time reverse transcription-PCR was used to relate the expression of several putative virulence genes (eae, espA, stx(2), rfbE, ehxA, and iha) to that of the "housekeeping" gene gnd during natural human and experimental bovine infection with E. coli O157:H7. We examined these genes in fecal samples from eight humans and four calves. iha and espA were significantly more expressed in bovine infections. rfbE and ehxA appeared to be more highly expressed in human infections, though these differences did not achieve statistical significance. Our results support the hypothesis that some virulence-associated genes of O157:H7 are differentially expressed in a host-specific manner.
大肠杆菌O157:H7在牛体内是共生菌,但在人类中是病原体。这种毒力的差异表达表明,特定的毒力因子在人类和牛宿主中的调控方式不同。为了验证这一假设,在自然人类感染和实验性牛感染大肠杆菌O157:H7期间,使用相对实时逆转录PCR来关联几个假定毒力基因(eae、espA、stx(2)、rfbE、ehxA和iha)与“管家”基因gnd的表达。我们检测了8名人类和4头小牛粪便样本中的这些基因。iha和espA在牛感染中表达显著更高。rfbE和ehxA在人类感染中似乎表达更高,尽管这些差异未达到统计学显著性。我们的结果支持这样的假设,即O157:H7的一些毒力相关基因以宿主特异性方式差异表达。