Alterations in Caenorhabditis elegans and Cronobacter sakazakii lipopolysaccharide during interaction

Lipopolysaccharide is one of the pathogen-associated molecular patterns of Gram-negative bacteria which are essential for its pathogenicity. Cronobacter sakazakii is an opportunistic, emergent pathogen, which infects and cause mortality in Caenorhabditis elegans. In this study, modifications in host and C. sakazakii LPS during infections were evaluated. The physiological assays revealed that LPS alone is sufficient to affect the host pharyngeal pumping rate, brood size and cause lethality. FTIR spectra of LPS revealed that C. sakazakii modifies its LPS to escape from the recognition of host immune system. These results indicate that LPS plays a key role in C. sakazakii pathogenicity. qPCR studies revealed that LPS modulated the expression of selected host immune (clec-60, clec-87, lys-7, ilys-3, F08G5.6, atf-7, scl-2, cpr-2) and aging-related genes (skn-1, clk-2, bra-2, age-1, bec-1, daf-16, daf-2). Moreover, it was confirmed that p38 MAPK pathway has a major role in host immune response against LPS-mediated challenges.