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The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections
Experimental infection systems are important for studying antagonistic interactions and coevolution between hosts and their pathogens. The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum and the spore-forming bacterial insect pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are widely used and tractable model organisms. H...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667772/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23737991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064638 |
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author | Milutinović, Barbara Stolpe, Clemens Peuβ, Robert Armitage, Sophie A. O. Kurtz, Joachim |
author_facet | Milutinović, Barbara Stolpe, Clemens Peuβ, Robert Armitage, Sophie A. O. Kurtz, Joachim |
author_sort | Milutinović, Barbara |
collection | PubMed |
description | Experimental infection systems are important for studying antagonistic interactions and coevolution between hosts and their pathogens. The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum and the spore-forming bacterial insect pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are widely used and tractable model organisms. However, they have not been employed yet as an efficient experimental system to study host-pathogen interactions. We used a high throughput oral infection protocol to infect T. castaneum insects with coleopteran specific B. thuringiensis bv. tenebrionis (Btt) bacteria. We found that larval mortality depends on the dietary spore concentration and on the duration of exposure to the spores. Furthermore, differential susceptibility of larvae from different T. castaneum populations indicates that the host genetic background influences infection success. The recovery of high numbers of infectious spores from the cadavers indicates successful replication of bacteria in the host and suggests that Btt could establish infectious cycles in T. castaneum in nature. We were able to transfer plasmids from Btt to a non-pathogenic but genetically well-characterised Bt strain, which was thereafter able to successfully infect T. castaneum, suggesting that factors residing on the plasmids are important for the virulence of Btt. The availability of a genetically accessible strain will provide an ideal model for more in-depth analyses of pathogenicity factors during oral infections. Combined with the availability of the full genome sequence of T. castaneum, this system will enable analyses of host responses during infection, as well as addressing basic questions concerning host-parasite coevolution. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3667772 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36677722013-06-04 The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections Milutinović, Barbara Stolpe, Clemens Peuβ, Robert Armitage, Sophie A. O. Kurtz, Joachim PLoS One Research Article Experimental infection systems are important for studying antagonistic interactions and coevolution between hosts and their pathogens. The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum and the spore-forming bacterial insect pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are widely used and tractable model organisms. However, they have not been employed yet as an efficient experimental system to study host-pathogen interactions. We used a high throughput oral infection protocol to infect T. castaneum insects with coleopteran specific B. thuringiensis bv. tenebrionis (Btt) bacteria. We found that larval mortality depends on the dietary spore concentration and on the duration of exposure to the spores. Furthermore, differential susceptibility of larvae from different T. castaneum populations indicates that the host genetic background influences infection success. The recovery of high numbers of infectious spores from the cadavers indicates successful replication of bacteria in the host and suggests that Btt could establish infectious cycles in T. castaneum in nature. We were able to transfer plasmids from Btt to a non-pathogenic but genetically well-characterised Bt strain, which was thereafter able to successfully infect T. castaneum, suggesting that factors residing on the plasmids are important for the virulence of Btt. The availability of a genetically accessible strain will provide an ideal model for more in-depth analyses of pathogenicity factors during oral infections. Combined with the availability of the full genome sequence of T. castaneum, this system will enable analyses of host responses during infection, as well as addressing basic questions concerning host-parasite coevolution. Public Library of Science 2013-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3667772/ /pubmed/23737991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064638 Text en © 2013 Milutinović 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 Milutinović, Barbara Stolpe, Clemens Peuβ, Robert Armitage, Sophie A. O. Kurtz, Joachim The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title | The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title_full | The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title_fullStr | The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title_full_unstemmed | The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title_short | The Red Flour Beetle as a Model for Bacterial Oral Infections |
title_sort | red flour beetle as a model for bacterial oral infections |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667772/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23737991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064638 |
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