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Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions

BACKGROUND: In nature, organisms are commonly coinfected by two or more parasite strains, which has been shown to influence disease virulence. Yet, the effects of coinfections of environmental opportunistic pathogens on disease outcome are still poorly known, although as host-generalists they are hi...

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Autores principales: Kinnula, Hanna, Mappes, Johanna, Sundberg, Lotta-Riina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5348763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28288561
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0922-2
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author Kinnula, Hanna
Mappes, Johanna
Sundberg, Lotta-Riina
author_facet Kinnula, Hanna
Mappes, Johanna
Sundberg, Lotta-Riina
author_sort Kinnula, Hanna
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In nature, organisms are commonly coinfected by two or more parasite strains, which has been shown to influence disease virulence. Yet, the effects of coinfections of environmental opportunistic pathogens on disease outcome are still poorly known, although as host-generalists they are highly likely to participate in coinfections. We asked whether coinfection with conspecific opportunistic strains leads to changes in virulence, and if these changes are associated with bacterial growth or interference competition. We infected zebra fish (Danio rerio) with three geographically and/or temporally distant environmental opportunist Flavobacterium columnare strains in single and in coinfection. Growth of the strains was studied in single and in co-cultures in liquid medium, and interference competition (growth-inhibiting ability) on agar. RESULTS: The individual strains differed in their virulence, growth and ability for interference competition. Number of coinfecting strains significantly influenced the virulence of infection, with three-strain coinfection differing from the two-strain and single infections. Differences in virulence seemed to associate with the identity of the coinfecting bacterial strains, and their pairwise interactions. This indicates that benefits of competitive ability (production of growth-inhibiting compounds) for virulence are highest when multiple strains co-occur, whereas the high virulence in coinfection may be independent from in vitro bacterial growth. CONCLUSIONS: Intraspecific competition can lead to plastic increase in virulence, likely caused by faster utilization of host resources stimulated by the competitive interactions between the strains. However, disease outcome depends both on the characteristics of individual strains and their interactions. Our results highlight the importance of strain interactions in disease dynamics in environments where various pathogen genotypes co-occur. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-0922-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-53487632017-03-14 Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions Kinnula, Hanna Mappes, Johanna Sundberg, Lotta-Riina BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: In nature, organisms are commonly coinfected by two or more parasite strains, which has been shown to influence disease virulence. Yet, the effects of coinfections of environmental opportunistic pathogens on disease outcome are still poorly known, although as host-generalists they are highly likely to participate in coinfections. We asked whether coinfection with conspecific opportunistic strains leads to changes in virulence, and if these changes are associated with bacterial growth or interference competition. We infected zebra fish (Danio rerio) with three geographically and/or temporally distant environmental opportunist Flavobacterium columnare strains in single and in coinfection. Growth of the strains was studied in single and in co-cultures in liquid medium, and interference competition (growth-inhibiting ability) on agar. RESULTS: The individual strains differed in their virulence, growth and ability for interference competition. Number of coinfecting strains significantly influenced the virulence of infection, with three-strain coinfection differing from the two-strain and single infections. Differences in virulence seemed to associate with the identity of the coinfecting bacterial strains, and their pairwise interactions. This indicates that benefits of competitive ability (production of growth-inhibiting compounds) for virulence are highest when multiple strains co-occur, whereas the high virulence in coinfection may be independent from in vitro bacterial growth. CONCLUSIONS: Intraspecific competition can lead to plastic increase in virulence, likely caused by faster utilization of host resources stimulated by the competitive interactions between the strains. However, disease outcome depends both on the characteristics of individual strains and their interactions. Our results highlight the importance of strain interactions in disease dynamics in environments where various pathogen genotypes co-occur. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-0922-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-03-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5348763/ /pubmed/28288561 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0922-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kinnula, Hanna
Mappes, Johanna
Sundberg, Lotta-Riina
Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title_full Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title_fullStr Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title_full_unstemmed Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title_short Coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
title_sort coinfection outcome in an opportunistic pathogen depends on the inter-strain interactions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5348763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28288561
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0922-2
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