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Published on: January 5, 2017
Infection with a human-derived enteroinvasive Escherichia coli strain altered intestinal barrier function in guinea
Jian-Jun Liu1, Juan-Juan Qiu2, Xiu Shan3
1Clinical Laboratory of Integrative Medicine, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China.
Background/Aims:
The aim was to characterize a bacterium causing intestinal mucosal barrier damage and to identify the possible invasion mechanism.
Materials And Methods:
The intestinal permeability and tight junction protein levels were detected in guinea pigs infected with Escherichia coli D-09 via immunofluorescence analysis and western blotting. In order to explain this invasion mechanism at the gene level, whole genome sequencing analysis was performed on this bacterium.
Results:
The results showed an increased intestinal permeability and upregulated expression of the leaky protein claudin-2 in both the colon and liver of the infected animals. In addition, the draft genome of E. coli D-09 comprised 42 scaffolds (size, > 645 bp) with a total size of 4,679,567 bp. A total of 4379 protein coding genes were identified, which contained 45 antibiotic resistance and 86 virulence-related genes and covered 88.0% of the whole genome.
Conclusions:
This study verified that the human-derived enteroinvasive E. coli strain could destroy intestinal barrier function in guinea pigs. Additionally, our data first characterized the genome features of E. coli O124:K72 D-09, which may provide new insights into the possible invasion mechanism.
