Amanda N. Wavrin Week 11

Vibrio cholerae Journal Club Article

Host-induced Epidemic Spread of the Choler Bacterium

Vocabulary

1. Electrophoresis-separation of ionic molecules, (principally proteins) by the differential migration through a gel according to the size and ionic charge of the molecules in an electrical field. High resolution techniques normally use a gel support for the fluid phase
2. Gavage-Forced feeding by stomach tube
3. Enumerate-To count; to reckon; to ascertain the units of
4. Chemotaxis-a response of motile cells or organisms in which the direction of movement is affected by the gradient of a diffusible substance. Differs from chemokinesis in that the gradient alters probability of motion in one direction only, rather than rate or frequency of random motion
5. Inoculation-The process of introducing an antigenic substance or vaccine into the body to trigger immune response against a specific disease.
6. Dissemination-The act of dispersing or diffusing something
7. Homogenization-The process by which a material is made homogeneous
8. Chromogenic-Producing colour, a chromogenic colony is a pigmented colony
9. Murine-Of, relating to, a member of the rodent family muridae, including rats and mice
10. Shine-Dalgarno sequence-A short stretch of nucleotides on a prokaryotic mRNA molecule upstream of the translational start site, that serves to bind to ribosomal RNA and thereby bring the ribosome to the initiation codon on the mRNA

Dictionary used: biology-online.org dictionary

Outline

• It is unclear as to what factors enhance the transission of pathogens during epidemic spread
• Vibrio Cholera is a water-borne diarrhoel disease
• Cholera was studied in its natural habitat in Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Stool samples were collected and tested for V. cholerae O1 Inaba El Tor from patients at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research
• These strains were used in murine infection studies by mixing an in vitro strain with the stool V. cholerae and using the mixture to inoculate mice
• The mice were euthanized after around 24 hours and the bacteria was collected from the mice and plated.
• out put ratios of stool-sample V. cholerae to the in vitro strain were corrected and represent the competitive indices
• A CI above one indicates enhanced infectivity
• A CI below one indicates decreased infectivity
• Human shed V. cholerae consistently showed enhances infectivity
• However, when the V. cholerae strain was purified and cultured in vitro this competitive advantage was lost
• These results suggest that passage through the human gastointestinal tract increases infectivity of the cholera bacterium
• They tested to see whether or not the human shed V. cholerae maintained its hyperinfectious state after being dispersed back into the environment
• After being infected into mice, they found that the hyperinfectious state remained
• They proposed that human passage enhances the infectivity of V. cholerae by lowering the infectious dose in secondary individuals
• They then conducted transcriptional profiling of human shed V. cholerae by using DNA microarray
• The DNA microarray contained around 87 percent of the ORFs of the Bangladeshi O1 El Tor reference strain
• stool samples were collected from three patients in the ICDDR
• The samples were filtered and frozen
• The samples showed the 'rice water' appearance typically found with V. cholerae
• The contained around 100 million V. cholerae per millilitre and showed few contaminating bacteria
• The stools were analyzed using gel electrophoresis
• One microgram of RNA from each sample was used for DNA synthesis, labelled with Cy5 and hybridized to the microarray with a Cy3 labelled reference strain- an expotentially growing O1 Inaba El Tor strain

The relative flourescent intensities were determined using an Axon scanner and the data was quantified, normalized, and corrected

• Using the Statistical Analysis for Microarrays program, they were able to identify significant differences in the intensity ratios