Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is responsible for a variety of diseases in domestic animals and humans. The infection of mice causes similar disease progression to human typhoid fever, thus representing a model for this systemic disease. The ability of S. Typhimurium to reside in a macrophage phagosome is important for their survival and spread to different organs. The antimicrobial mechanisms in this compartment include reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species and elevated copper levels. S. Typhimurium possesses two copper-exporting P1B-type ATPases, CopA and GolT, both of which contribute to copper resistance. A previous study has shown that copper export by CopA and GolT confers a survival advantage in resting macrophage phagosomes. In this study the role of copper resistance systems has been examined further. The reduced survival of ΔcopA/ΔgolT in macrophages is detected beyond 8 hours post infection and coincides with increased nitrite production by macrophages. We have established that ΔcopA/ΔgolT display some increased sensitivity to reactive nitrogen species. However, whilst treatment of macrophages with the iNOS inhibitor L-NMMA reduced macrophage bactericidal activity against wildtype S. Typhimurium, this was not the case for ΔcopA/ΔgolT. In contrast, survival of ΔcopA/ΔgolT was not impaired in macrophages treated with the copper-chelator BCS. Furthermore real-time PCR confirmed the expression of copA and golT is elevated during infection of macrophages treated with IFN-γ or L-NMMA, but is reduced during infection of BCS treated macrophages. This indicates that bactericidal activity in macrophages is associated with copper availability and this is unaffected by reactive nitrogen species released due to iNOS activity. In contrast to Escherichia coli Salmonella lacks a cus system associated with export across the outer membrane and hence the mechanism of copper export from the periplasm is not known. TolC was investigated as a potential outer membrane copper exporter based on clustering of TolC dependent systems to genes with sequence similarity to the S. typhimurium periplasmic copper chaperone CueP, across several bacteria. Mutation of tolC gave reduced copper tolerance and over-accumulation of copper at non-lethal concentrations under aerobic conditions. However TolC does not provide a role in copper tolerance or homeostasis under anaerobic conditions. TolC also does not provide tolerance or homeostasis to other divalent cations: Zn, Ni and Co. TolC therefore provides specific transport of copper under aerobic conditions in S. Typhimurium.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:647382 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Pointon, Thomas |
| Contributors | Roberts, Ian; Cavet, Jennifer |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/copper-homeostasis-and-salmonella-pathogenicity-interplay-with-resistance-to-nitrosative-stress(a6020187-75f8-4d2c-8051-31aca46aea0a).html |
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