Papers by Alexandra Durand
Environmental microbiology, 2013
The bovine gastrointestinal (GI) tract is the main reservoir for enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia c... more The bovine gastrointestinal (GI) tract is the main reservoir for enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) responsible for food-borne infections. Characterization of nutrients preferentially used by EHEC in the bovine intestine would help to develop ecological strategies to reduce EHEC carriage. However, the carbon sources that support the growth of EHEC in the bovine intestine are poorly documented. In this study, a very low concentration of glucose, the most abundant monomer included in the cattle dietary polysaccharides, was detected in bovine small intestine contents (BSIC) collected from healthy cows at the slaughterhouse. Six carbohydrates reported to be included in the mucus layer covering the enterocytes [galactose, N-acetyl-glucosamine (GlcNAc), N-acetyl- galactosamine (GalNAc), fucose, mannose and N-acetyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac)] have been quantified for the first time in BSIC and accounted for a total concentration of 4.2 mM carbohydrates. The genes required for enzyma...
PLoS Pathogens, 2014
Expression of genes of the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE) is essential for adherence of ent... more Expression of genes of the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE) is essential for adherence of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) to intestinal epithelial cells. Gut factors that may modulate LEE gene expression may therefore influence the outcome of the infection. Because nitric oxide (NO) is a critical effector of the intestinal immune response that may induce transcriptional regulation in enterobacteria, we investigated its influence on LEE expression in EHEC O157:H7. We demonstrate that NO inhibits the expression of genes belonging to LEE1, LEE4, and LEE5 operons, and that the NO sensor nitrite-sensitive repressor (NsrR) is a positive regulator of these operons by interacting directly with the RNA polymerase complex. In the presence of NO, NsrR detaches from the LEE1/4/5 promoter regions and does not activate transcription. In parallel, two regulators of the acid resistance pathway, GadE and GadX, are induced by NO through an indirect NsrRdependent mechanism. In this context, we show that the NO-dependent LEE1 down-regulation is due to absence of NsrRmediated activation and to the repressor effect of GadX. Moreover, the inhibition of expression of LEE4 and LEE5 by NO is due to loss of NsrR-mediated activation, to LEE1 down-regulation and to GadE up-regulation. Lastly, we establish that chemical or cellular sources of NO inhibit the adherence of EHEC to human intestinal epithelial cells. These results highlight the critical effect of NsrR in the regulation of the LEE pathogenicity island and the potential role of NO in the limitation of colonization by EHEC.
International Journal of Food Microbiology, 2014
Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) are anthropozoonotic agents that range third among food... more Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) are anthropozoonotic agents that range third among food-borne pathogens respective to their incidence and dangerousness in the European Union. EHEC are Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) responsible for foodborne poisoning mainly incriminated to the consumption of contaminated beef meat. Among the hundreds of STEC serotypes identified, EHEC mainly belong to O157:H7 but non-O157 can represent 20 to 70% of EHEC infections per year. Seven of those serogroups are especially of high-risk for human health, i.e. O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, O145 and O104. While meat can be contaminated all along the food processing chain, EHEC contamination essentially occurs at the dehiding stage of slaughtering. Investigating bacterial colonization to the skeletal-muscle extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, it appeared that environmental factors influenced specific and non-specific bacterial adhesion of O157 and non-O157 EHEC as well as biofilm formation. Importantly, mechanical treatment (i.e. shaking, centrifugation, pipetting and vortexing) inhibited and biased the results of bacterial adhesion assay. Besides stressing the importance of the protocol to investigate bacterial adhesion to ECM proteins, this study demonstrated that the colonization abilities to ECM proteins vary among EHEC serogroups and should ultimately be taken into consideration to evaluate the risk of contamination for different types of food matrices.
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Papers by Alexandra Durand