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Bacterial pathogenesis

Genomics toolkit for UPEC

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 5, page 477 (2007)Cite this article

Urinary tract infections (UTI) range from mild cystitis to painful pyelonephritis, and although not typically fatal, are common and often recur. More than 80% of UTIs are caused by UPEC, a species which is usually present in the colonic microbiota, but which can gain access to the urethra and bladder through the periurethra and vagina. Once in the bladder, bacteria invade epithelial umbrella cells and form intracellular bacterial communities (IBCs) in the cytoplasm that protrude out of the epithelia to form structures named pods. IBCs are protected from the immune response and antibiotics. Cells in IBCs can dissociate, sloughing off bacteria that infect cells anew, thereby continuing the cycle of infection and, in some hosts, producing recurrent bouts of acute disease.

The UPEC strain UTI89, which was isolated from a cystitis sufferer, was sequenced in 2006, and the authors have now exploited this resource to implement a functional genomics strategy to investigate UPEC pathogenesis. UTI89 shares 70% of its ORFs with the benign E. coli strain MG1655, and this strain served as a comparison in transcriptional profiling experiments.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Reigstad, C. S., Hultgren, S. J. & Gordon, J. I. Functional genomic studies of uropathogenic E. coli and host urothelial cells when intracellular bacterial communities are assembled. J. Biol. Chem. 14 May 2007 (doi:10.1074/jbc.M611502200).

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Authors
  1. Susan Jones
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Jones, S. Genomics toolkit for UPEC. Nat Rev Microbiol 5, 477 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1698

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1698

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