Phase Transition of the Bacterium upon Invasion of a Host Cell as a Mechanism of Adaptation: a Mycoplasma gallisepticum Model

What strategies do bacteria employ for adaptation to their hosts and are these strategies different for varied hosts? To date, many studies on the interaction of the bacterium and its host have been published. However, global changes in the bacterial cell in the process of invasion and persistence, remain poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrated phase transition of the avian pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum upon invasion of the various types of eukaryotic cells (human, chicken, and mouse) which was stable during several passages after isolation of intracellular clones and recultivation in a culture medium. It was shown that this phase transition is manifested in changes at the proteomic, genomic and metabolomic levels. Eukaryotic cells induced similar proteome reorganization of M. gallisepticum during infection, despite different origins of the host cell lines. Proteomic changes affected a broad range of processes including metabolism, translation and oxidative stress response. We determined that the activation of glycerol utilization, overproduction of hydrogen peroxide and the upregulation of the SpxA regulatory protein occurred during intracellular infection. We propose SpxA as an important regulator for the adaptation of M. gallisepticum to an intracellular environment.