Topologically correct synthetic reconstruction of pathogen social behavior found during Yersinia growth in deep tissue sites
- Tufts University, United States
- Boston College, United States
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States
Abstract
Within deep tissue sites, extracellular bacterial pathogens often replicate in clusters that are surrounded by immune cells. Disease is modulated by interbacterial interactions as well as bacterial-host cell interactions resulting in microbial growth, phagocytic attack and secretion of host antimicrobial factors. To overcome the limited ability to manipulate these infection sites, we established a system for Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (Yptb) growth in microfluidics-driven microdroplets that regenerates microbial social behavior in tissues. Chemical generation of nitric oxide (NO) in the absence of immune cells was sufficient to reconstruct microbial social behavior, as witnessed by expression of the NO-inactivating protein Hmp on the extreme periphery of microcolonies, mimicking spatial regulation in tissues. Similarly, activated macrophages that expressed inducible NO synthase (iNOS) drove peripheral expression of Hmp, allowing regeneration of social behavior observed in tissues. These results argue that topologically correct microbial tissue growth and associated social behavior can be reconstructed in culture.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Scripts described have been deposited with GitHub and the appropriate link is provided in manuscript.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01 AI110684)
- Ralph Isberg
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R21 151593)
- Ralph Isberg
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (U01 AI124302)
- Tim van Opijnen
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01 AI110724)
- Tim van Opijnen
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32 TM007310)
- Stacie A Clark
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32 TM007310)
- Derek Thibault
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#B2016-21 and B2019-03 ) of Tufts University. No surgeries were performed.
Copyright
© 2020, Clark et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Topologically correct synthetic reconstruction of pathogen social behavior found during Yersinia growth in deep tissue sites
eLife 9:e58106.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58106
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