Sloan Gina Parise, Love Cheraton F, Sukumar Neelima, Mishra Meenu, Deora Rajendar
Program in Molecular Genetics, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Medical Center Blvd., Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27157, USA.
J Bacteriol. 2007 Nov;189(22):8270-6. doi: 10.1128/JB.00785-07. Epub 2007 Jun 22.
Bordetellae are respiratory pathogens that infect both humans and animals. Bordetella bronchiseptica establishes asymptomatic and long-term to life-long infections of animal nasopharynges. While the human pathogen Bordetella pertussis is the etiological agent of the acute disease whooping cough in infants and young children, it is now being increasingly isolated from the nasopharynges of vaccinated adolescents and adults who sometimes show milder symptoms, such as prolonged cough illness. Although it has been shown that Bordetella can form biofilms in vitro, nothing is known about its biofilm mode of existence in mammalian hosts. Using indirect immunofluorescence and scanning electron microscopy, we examined nasal tissues from mice infected with B. bronchiseptica. Our results demonstrate that a wild-type strain formed robust biofilms that were adherent to the nasal epithelium and displayed architectural attributes characteristic of a number of bacterial biofilms formed on inert surfaces. We have previously shown that the Bordetella Bps polysaccharide encoded by the bpsABCD locus is critical for the stability and maintenance of three-dimensional structures of biofilms. We show here that Bps is essential for the formation of efficient nasal biofilms and is required for the colonization of the nose. Our results document a biofilm lifestyle for Bordetella in mammalian respiratory tracts and highlight the essential role of the Bps polysaccharide in this process and in persistence of the nares.
博德特氏菌属是感染人类和动物的呼吸道病原体。支气管败血博德特氏菌可在动物鼻咽部建立无症状的长期至终身感染。而人类病原体百日咳博德特氏菌是婴幼儿急性疾病百日咳的病原体，现在越来越多地从接种疫苗的青少年和成年人的鼻咽部分离出来，这些人有时会表现出较轻的症状，如持续性咳嗽疾病。尽管已经证明博德特氏菌能在体外形成生物膜，但对于其在哺乳动物宿主体内的生物膜存在模式却一无所知。我们利用间接免疫荧光和扫描电子显微镜检查了感染支气管败血博德特氏菌的小鼠的鼻组织。我们的结果表明，野生型菌株形成了坚固的生物膜，这些生物膜附着在鼻上皮上，并呈现出在惰性表面形成的许多细菌生物膜所特有的结构特征。我们之前已经表明，由bpsABCD基因座编码的博德特氏菌Bps多糖对于生物膜三维结构的稳定性和维持至关重要。我们在此表明，Bps对于高效鼻生物膜的形成至关重要，并且是鼻腔定植所必需的。我们的结果记录了博德特氏菌在哺乳动物呼吸道中的生物膜生活方式，并突出了Bps多糖在这一过程以及在鼻孔持续存在中的重要作用。
