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To increase our understanding of bacterial intestinal colonization in animal populations lacking anthropogenic influence we devised the first objective and studied the diversity of E. coli in pristine wild animal population. Overall, E. coli in cormorants maintained a high diversity under minimal anthropogenic influences. E. coli were isolated from individual birds of two cormorant colonies located on small islands in lakes at least 100 km away from human settlements. Diversity of the isolates was studied using pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). 137 isolates of cormorant colony-1 and 75 isolates of cormorant colony-2 resulted in 60 and 33 PFGE types, respectively. Representative strains of each PFGE type were analysed in terms of phylogroups, extraintestinal virulence associated genes (exVAGs), adhesion to the chicken intestinal cell line and antimicrobials. Most isolates belonged to phylogroup B1 (68.3%) followed by B2 and E with B2 harbouring the highest total number of exVAGs per isolate. Surprisingly, a PFGE type with relatively few exVAGs displayed the highest isolation frequency, also showing a high adhesion rate. Comparative analysis of exVAGs to other E. coli populations of wildlife origin revealed that the secreted autotransporter toxin encoding sat gene was only present in cormorants.
The second objective was to characterize and identify factors contributing to the novel adhesion phenotype, known as Clumpy adhesion by the strain 4972 E. coli when incubated on human urinary bladder 5637 cell line. Transcriptome and proteome of adhered bacteria clustered together and diverged from bacteria in the supernatant. The clumpy structure was further explored in terms antibiotic stress where sessile structures could tolerate high antibiotic pressure of ampicillin up to 16 mg/ml and gentamicin up to 2 µg/ml. Data analysis unveiled differential expression of 623 genes between bacteria forming clumps and in supernatant. 148 genes were hypothetical and five hypothetical genes i.e., ffp, espX1, pilV, spnT and yggT along with four known genes i.e., dnaK, spy, flgH and fimH were targeted for deletion. Seven genes deletion mutants, three known (i.e., spy, flgH and fimH) and four hypothetical (ffp, pilV, spnT and yggT) genes were successfully generated and analysed for various parameters. ΔflgH showed loss of clumpy phenotype and adhesion ability up to 80% was regenerated by complementation. When antibiotic stress by ampicillin was applied after clump formation, Δffp depicted no effect of high concentration of ampicillin. In case of ΔpilV, adhesion significantly increased to 151% and upon complementation, adhesion was reduced to 53%. ΔspnT during ampicillin stressed adhesion fared almost 8.5 times better than the wild type strain. ΔyggT exhibited high adhesion of 145.5 % and upon reintroduction, adhesion decreased to 13%. Overall, we were able characterize a new phenotype and determined the role of genes contributing to clumpy adhesion phenotype.