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Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen

During the last decade, Clostridium difficile infection showed a dramatic increase in incidence and virulence in the Northern hemisphere. This incessantly challenging disease is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated and nosocomial infectious diarrhea and became life-threatening especially among...

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Autores principales: Köpke, Michael, Straub, Melanie, Dürre, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3633928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23626782
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062157
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author Köpke, Michael
Straub, Melanie
Dürre, Peter
author_facet Köpke, Michael
Straub, Melanie
Dürre, Peter
author_sort Köpke, Michael
collection PubMed
description During the last decade, Clostridium difficile infection showed a dramatic increase in incidence and virulence in the Northern hemisphere. This incessantly challenging disease is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated and nosocomial infectious diarrhea and became life-threatening especially among elderly people. It is generally assumed that all human bacterial pathogens are heterotrophic organisms, being either saccharolytic or proteolytic. So far, this has not been questioned as colonization of the human gut gives access to an environment, rich in organic nutrients. Here, we present data that C. difficile (both clinical and rumen isolates) is also able to grow on CO(2)+H(2) as sole carbon and energy source, thus representing the first identified autotrophic bacterial pathogen. Comparison of several different strains revealed high conservation of genes for autotrophic growth and showed that the ability to use gas mixtures for growth decreases or is lost upon prolonged culturing under heterotrophic conditions. The metabolic flexibility of C. difficile (heterotrophic growth on various substrates as well as autotrophy) could allow the organism in the gut to avoid competition by niche differentiation and contribute to its survival when stressed or in unfavorable conditions that cause death to other bacteria. This may be an important trait for the pathogenicity of C. difficile.
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spelling pubmed-36339282013-04-26 Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen Köpke, Michael Straub, Melanie Dürre, Peter PLoS One Research Article During the last decade, Clostridium difficile infection showed a dramatic increase in incidence and virulence in the Northern hemisphere. This incessantly challenging disease is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated and nosocomial infectious diarrhea and became life-threatening especially among elderly people. It is generally assumed that all human bacterial pathogens are heterotrophic organisms, being either saccharolytic or proteolytic. So far, this has not been questioned as colonization of the human gut gives access to an environment, rich in organic nutrients. Here, we present data that C. difficile (both clinical and rumen isolates) is also able to grow on CO(2)+H(2) as sole carbon and energy source, thus representing the first identified autotrophic bacterial pathogen. Comparison of several different strains revealed high conservation of genes for autotrophic growth and showed that the ability to use gas mixtures for growth decreases or is lost upon prolonged culturing under heterotrophic conditions. The metabolic flexibility of C. difficile (heterotrophic growth on various substrates as well as autotrophy) could allow the organism in the gut to avoid competition by niche differentiation and contribute to its survival when stressed or in unfavorable conditions that cause death to other bacteria. This may be an important trait for the pathogenicity of C. difficile. Public Library of Science 2013-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3633928/ /pubmed/23626782 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062157 Text en © 2013 Köpke et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Köpke, Michael
Straub, Melanie
Dürre, Peter
Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title_full Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title_fullStr Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title_full_unstemmed Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title_short Clostridium difficile Is an Autotrophic Bacterial Pathogen
title_sort clostridium difficile is an autotrophic bacterial pathogen
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3633928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23626782
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062157
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