Growth rates and metabolic traits differ by diarrhoeal manifestation in strains.

is the leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Infections with can result in two different diarrhoeal manifestations in humans: watery diarrhoea or bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea. Currently, little is known about and/or host factors associated with the elicitation of these two distinct diarrhoeal manifestations. We hypothesize that these factors may include growth and metabolic trait differences between strains associated with watery diarrhoea and bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea. Using strains with a defined diarrhoeal manifestation in the neonatal piglet model, we aimed to assess differences in temperature-dependent growth rates, motility, biofilm production and carbon utilization between diarrhoeal manifestation groups.. Strains were initially assessed for 192 different carbon sources using phenotypic microarrays followed by specific carbon utilization, growth, motility and biofilm assays at 37 and/or 42 °C.. We found that at 37 °C, watery diarrhoea-associated strains grew significantly faster compared with bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains. However, there was no significant growth difference at 42 °C between the groups, due to bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains growing faster at 42 °C compared with 37 °C. Additionally, at 37 °C, we found that l-fucose utilization was significantly higher among watery diarrhoea-associated strains, while l-glutamine utilization was significantly higher among bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains.. The results indicate there are distinct metabolic adaptations between watery and/or bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains particularly at 37 °C, which may be one of the factors associated with differing diarrhoeal manifestations.