PubMed · 15040253
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Louisa Flintoft. 2004. Pathogenic E. coli--getting intimate.. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro831
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Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) causes disease in children, presenting as chronic diarrhea that can impair physical and cognitive development. The attachment of typical EPEC (tEPEC) to the gut epithelium via bundle-forming pili (BFP) is a key factor in its virulence. Yet, infections by atypical EPEC (aEPEC), which lack BFP, have become increasingly common. To investigate how aEPEC recover host-attachment in the absence of BFP, we performed experimental evolution using a non-adherent E. coli, constructed to mimic the ancestor of aEPEC, and selected adherent progeny. Highly adherent variants evolved through phase-variable activation of type I fimbriae (T1F), followed by two alternative trajectories: bacterial filamentation, which increases T1F avidity, or point mutations in the T1F adhesin FimH that enhance ligand affinity. Extending our analysis to the genomes of 327 aEPEC strains isolated from infected patients revealed that similar FimH mutations are common. We further demonstrated experimentally that these naturally occurring variants often increase epithelial-attachment. Our findings implicate T1F in aEPEC pathogenesis and suggest it may be clinically relevant for anti-adhesion therapy. More broadly, these results indicate that impaired host-attachment can be rapidly compensated by upregulating and optimizing an alternative adhesin, and that combining experimental evolution with comparative genomics can reveal evolutionary trajectories occurring in nature.
Bacteria frequently colonize host and environmental surfaces under fluid flow. Chain-like adherence pattern (CLAP) is an EibG-mediated surface colonization phenotype of certain Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) that lack the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE). EibG, an immunoglobulin-binding trimeric autotransporter adhesin, drives CLAP, but the temporal dynamics and genetic diversity underlying chain formation remain unclear. Here, we use live-cell time-lapse imaging to show that chains arise from single cells that elongate and divide without separation. Under flow, chains resist detachment and undergo shear-dependent fragmentation at cell-cell junctions, releasing viable clonal units that disperse downstream. Comparative genomics reveals diversity among EibG-related adhesins and identifies distinct lineages, including chain-like adhesins (Cla) that mediate CLAP while lacking IgG binding. Screening of 1,354 genomes from England shows that claB is present in 95.6% of strains from major LEE-negative STEC serotypes, highlighting its epidemiological prevalence. Targeted mutagenesis demonstrates that chain formation and IgG binding are mediated by distinct structural domains, revealing the modular functional architecture of these adhesins. Furthermore, we show that EibG, ClaA, and ClaB confer robust resistance to complement-mediated killing. Collectively, these findings establish CLAP as a dynamic, surface-associated strategy of LEE-negative STEC and reveal diversification among adhesins that drive this behavior.
Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157:H7 virulence factors, specifically those conferring intimate adherence to and formation of attaching and effacing lesions (A/E) on host cells, are encoded by a horizontally acquired locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE). Expression of several LEE-encoded genes, which are organized into operons LEE1 through LEE5, is under the positive regulation of ler, the first gene in the LEE1 operon. We have recently demonstrated that EHEC O157:H7 lacking hha exhibited greater than a 10-fold increase in ler expression and that the repression of ler results from the binding of Hha to the ler promoter. In this report, we show that an hha mutant of EHEC O157:H7 exhibited increased adherence to Hep-2 cells, had increased transcriptional activities of LEE1, LEE2, LEE3, and LEE5 as determined by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assays, and expressed LEE5::lac transcriptional fusion at levels that were several-fold higher than that expressed by the parental hha+ strain. These results demonstrate that hha is an important regulatory component of the cascade that governs the expression of LEE operons and the resulting ability of EHEC O157:H7 to intimately adhere to host cells.