Regulative synthesis of capsular polysaccharides in the pathogenesis of Streptococcus suis

Reviewer #1 (Public review):

Summary:

The manuscript by Wang et al. investigates the interesting relationship between Streptococcus suis (S. suis) growth phases and levels of virulence factor, specifically the capsular polysaccharide (CPS), in the bacterial cell wall. S. suis is a gram positive bacterial pathogen that causes important losses in the swine industry worldwide. Interestingly, S. suis is also a resident bacteria in the pig tonsils. Vaccination against bacterial infections such as S. suis can be difficult, and understanding how the serotype of a bacterial pathogen impacts what body sites are infected and the dynamics of pathogen dissemination is critical. In this case, this manuscript looks at neuroinvasion of S. suis following intranasal delivery because this pathogen causes meningitis in infected hosts. Further, understanding host - pathogen interactions at early time points in the upper respiratory tract may have broad implications for vaccine development.

The authors use an understudied mouse intranasal infection model of S. suis to connect growth phase related CPS abundance to the pathogenicity of the bacteria in the nose and blood.

Adoptive transfer of serum against either CPS or V5 (five other virulence factors) supports the idea that S. suis CPS levels are an important factor that shapes how this bacterium reaches different organs.

Some conclusions are not completely supported by the present data, and at times the manuscript is disjoint and hard to follow. While the work has some interesting observations, additional experiments and controls are warranted to support the claims of the manuscript .

Strengths:

The model of intranasal infection is compelling to expand upon work previously done in vitro and with systemic routes of infection. The histology and fluorescent imaging of the olfactory epithelium and olfactory bulb complement work in figure 2 about the attachment of S. Suis to epithelial cells and the bacterial burden over time in different organs of figure 3. Histology was performed at 1 hour and 9 days after intranasal infection with stationary phase S. Suis and drives home that this pathogen can invade the olfactory nerve and may potentially cause bacterial meningitis seen in some infected swine.

The adoptive transfer of either anti-CPS or anti-V5 to mice before infection at both longer (12 hr), and shorter (1 hr) time points is useful to demonstrate that the changes in cell wall composition between the NALT/CSF and blood compartments result in different efficacy in clearing bacteria from those locations. This is fundamental for the development of vaccines for the swine industry and begs those developing other bacterial vaccines to consider what virulence factors are the most useful as neutralizing antibody targets at the sight of bacterial invasion.

Demonstrating that the amount of CPS within the cell wall of S. suis is related to the growth phase of the bacteria is an important consideration for vaccine development. While others had previously shown that CPS levels were higher in the blood than in the CNS, and that CPS decreases the invasion of epithelial cells, the close look at the olfactory epithelium at an early time point of 1 hr ties together in vitro findings. The control of a CPS-negative strain was critical to understanding their findings. The location and the microbial community that bacterial pathogens live within may change the growth phase and therefore also the cell wall components.

Weaknesses:

While the authors present compelling data that is relevant to the development of anti-bacterial vaccinations, the data does not completely match their assertions and there are places where some further investigation would further the impact of their interesting study.

Major concerns for the manuscript:

-The intranasal infections were done with S. suis in the stationary phase which has been shown to have less CPS on the cell wall. While this mimics the literature that shows S. Suis to have less CPS in the CNS, the difference in the pathogenesis of a log phase vs. stationary phage intranasal infection would be interesting. Especially because the bacteria is a part of the natural microbial community of swine tonsils, it is curious if the change in growth phase and therefore CPS levels may be a causative reason for pathogenic invasion in some pigs.

-The authors should consider taking the bacteria from NALT/CSF and blood and compare the lag times bacteria from different organs take to enter a log growth phase to show whether the difference in CPS is because S. suis in each location is in a different growth phase. If log phase bacteria were intranasally delivered, would it adapt a stationary phase life strategy? How long would that take?

-Authors should be cautious about claims about S. suis downregulating CPS in the NALT for increased invasion and upregulating CPS to survive phagocytosis in blood. While it is true that the data shows that there are different levels of CPS in these locations, the regulation and mechanism of the recorded and observed cell wall difference are not investigated past the correlation to the growth phase.

- The mouse model used in this manuscript is useful but cannot reproduce the nasal environment of the natural pig host. It is not clear if the NALTs of pigs and mice have similar microbial communities and how this may affect the pathogenesis of S. Suis in the mouse. Because the authors show a higher infection rate in the mouse with acetic acid, they may want to consider investigating what the mouse NALT microenvironment is naturally doing to exclude more bacterial invasion. Is it simply a host mismatch or is there something about the microbiome or steady-state immune system in the nose of mice that is different from pigs?

-I have some concerns regarding the images shown for neuroinvasion because I think the authors mistake several compartments of the mouse nasal cavity as well as the olfactory bulb. These issues are critical because neuroinvasion is one of the major conclusions of this work.

Reviewer #2 (Public review):

In this manuscript from Wang et al., the authors seek to examine the role of capsular polysaccharides (CPS) in invasive S. suis pathogenesis. They show that CPS thickness variations associate with isolation from different compartments within the infected mouse and that CPS promotes resistance to blood borne immune mechanisms. The authors conclude that thick CPS inhibits colonization/invasion of the NALT and rather antisera against non-CPS. These results are interesting and thought provoking and provide the continued basis for future experiments that delve further into immune mechanisms. However, there are serious concerns about data collection and interpretation that require further data to provide an accurate conclusion. Some of these concerns are highlighted below:

In figure 2, the authors conclude that high levels of CPS confer resistance to phagocytic killing in blood exposed S. suis. However, it seems equally likely that this is resistance against complement mediated killing. It would be important to compare S. suis killing in animals depleted of complement components (C3 and C5-9).

Intranasal administration non-CPS antisera provides a nice contrast to intravenous administration, especially in light of the recently identified "blood-olfactory barrier". Can the authors provide any insight into how long and where this antibody would be located after intranasal administration? Would this be antibody mediated cellular resistance, or something akin to simple antibody "neutralization"

The micrographs in Figure 7 depict anatomy from the respiratory mucosa. While there is no histochemical identification of neurons, the tissues labeled OE are almost certainly not olfactory and in fact respiratory. However, more troubling is that in figures 7A,a,b,e, and f, the lateral nasal organ has been labeled as the olfactory bulb. This undermines the conclusion of CNS invasion, and also draws into question other experiments in which the brain and CSF are measured.

Micrographs of brain tissue in 7B are taken from distal parts of the brain, whereas if olfactory neuroinvasion were occurring, the bacteria would be expected to arrive in the olfactory bulb. It's also difficult to understand how an inflammatory process would be developed to this point in the brain -even if we were looking at the appropriate region of the brain -within an hour of inoculation (is there a control for acetic acid induced brain inflammation?). Some explanations about the speed of the immune responses recorded are warranted.

The detected presence of S. suis in the CSF 0.5hr following intranasal inoculation is difficult to understand from an anatomical perspective. This is especially true when the amount of S. suis is nearly the same as that found within the NALT. Even motile pathogens would need far longer than 0.5hr to get into the brain, so it's exceedingly difficult to understand how this could occur so extensively in under an hour. The authors are quantifying CSF as anything that comes out of the brain after mincing. Firstly, this should more accurately be referred to as "brain", not CSF. Secondly, is it possible that the lateral nasal organ -which is mistakenly identified as olfactory bulb in figure 7- is being included in the CNS processing? This would explain the equivalent amounts of S. suis in NALT and "CSF".

To support their conclusions about neuroinvasion along the olfactory route and /CSF titer the authors should provide more compelling images to support this conclusion: sections stained for neurons and S. suis, images of the actual olfactory bulb (neurons, glomerular structure etc).