Bacterial growth rate and host factors as determinants of intracellular bacterial distributions in systemic Salmonella enterica infections.
Bacteria of the species Salmonella enterica cause a range of life-threatening diseases in humans and animals worldwide. The within-host quantitative, spatial, and temporal dynamics of S. enterica interactions are key to understanding how immunity acts on these infections and how bacteria evade immune surveillance. In this study, we test hypotheses generated from mathematical models of in vivo dynamics of Salmonella infections with experimental observation of bacteria at the single-cell level in infected mouse organs to improve our understanding of the dynamic interactions between host and bacterial mechanisms that determine net growth rates of S. enterica within the host. We show that both bacterial and host factors determine the numerical distributions of bacteria within host cells and thus the level of dispersiveness of the infection.
Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. ajg60@cam.ac.uk
Andrew J
AJ
Grant
Gemma L
GL
Foster
Trevelyan J
TJ
McKinley
Sam P
SP
Brown
Simon
S
Clare
Duncan J
DJ
Maskell
Pietro
P
Mastroeni
D000818:Animals; D015169:Colony Count, Microbial; D003593:Cytoplasm / Q000382:microbiology*; D005260:Female; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010586:Phagocytes / Q000382:microbiology; D012481:Salmonella Infections, Animal / Q000276:immunology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D019779:Salmonella enterica / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000276:immunology*