intracellular replication assay to examine the molecular pathogenesis of shigella

Protocols for Analyzing Shigella Infection in Colonic Epithelial Cells

Diarrheal diseases caused by enteric bacterial pathogens are a significant global health burden. In 2016, diarrheal diseases were responsible for 1.3 million deaths worldwide and were the fourth leading cause of death in children younger than five years of age1,2. The Gram-negative, enteric bacterial pathogen Shigella is the causative agent of shigellosis, a major cause of diarrheal deaths worldwide3. Shigellosis causes significant morbidity and mortality each year in children from lower- and middle-income countries4,5, while infections in high-income countries are linked to daycare center, foodborne, and waterborne outbreaks6,7,8,9. Ineffective vaccine development10 and rising rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)11,12 have complicated the management of large-scale Shigella outbreaks. Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that nearly 46% of Shigella infections in the United States displayed drug resistance in 202013,14, while the World Health Organization has declared Shigella as an AMR priority pathogen for which new therapies are urgently needed15.
Shigella infections are easily transmitted via the fecal-oral route upon ingestion of contaminated food or water, or through direct human contact. Shigella has evolved to be an efficient, human-adapted pathogen, with an infectious dose of 10-100 bacteria sufficient to cause disease16. During small intestinal transit, Shigella is exposed to environmental signals, such as elevated temperature and bile17. Detection of these signals induces transcriptional changes to express virulence factors that enhance the ability of the bacteria to infect the human colon17,18,19. Shigella does not invade the colonic epithelium from the apical surface, but rather transits across the epithelial layer following uptake into specialized antigen-presenting microfold cells (M cells) within the follicle-associated epithelium20,21,22. Following transcytosis, Shigella cells are phagocytosed by resident macrophages. Shigella rapidly escapes the phagosome and triggers macrophage cell death, resulting in the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines5,23,24. Shigella then invades colonic epithelial cells from the basolateral side, lyses the macropinocytic vacuole, and establishes a replicative niche in the cytoplasm5,25. Pro-inflammatory cytokines, particularly interleukin-8 (IL-8), recruit polymorphonuclear neutrophil leukocytes (PMNs) to the site of infection, which weakens epithelial tight junctions, and enables bacterial infiltration of the epithelial lining to exacerbate basolateral infection5. The PMNs destroy the infected epithelial lining to contain the infection, which results in the characteristic symptoms of bacillary (bloody) dysentery5. Although invasion and intracellular replication mechanisms have been thoroughly characterized, new research is demonstrating important new concepts in Shigella infection, including virulence regulation during gastrointestinal (GI) transit17, adherence19, improved basolateral access through barrier permeability26, and asymptomatic carriage in malnourished children27.
The ability of Shigella spp. to cause diarrheal disease is restricted to humans and non-human primates (NHP)28. Shigella intestinal infection models have been developed for zebrafish29, mice30, guinea pigs31, rabbits21,32,33, and pigs34,35. However, none of these model systems can accurately replicate the disease characteristics observed during human infection36. Although NHP models of shigellosis have been established to study Shigella pathogenesis, these model systems are expensive to implement and require artificially high infectious doses, up to nine orders of magnitude higher than the infectious dose of humans37,38,39,40,41,42. Thus, the remarkable adaptation of Shigella for infection of human hosts necessitates the use of human-derived cell cultures to recreate physiologically relevant models for accurate interrogation of Shigella pathogenesis.
Here, detailed procedures are described to measure the rates of Shigella adherence to, invasion of, and replication within HT-29 colonic epithelial cells. Using these standardized protocols, the molecular mechanisms by which bacterial virulence genes and environmental signals impact each step of Shigella infection can be interrogated to better understand the dynamic host-pathogen interaction relationship.

Author Spotlight: Advancements in Understanding and Combatting Shigella Infections

Epithelial Cell Infection Analyses with Shigella

Shigella is a significant global pathogen that causes devastating infection rates every year. Shigella infects the gastrointestinal tract to cause diarrhea or dysentery. Our research aims to improve our understanding of infection to help develop more effective therapeutics like vaccines and other antimicrobial products.First, animal models and emerging tissue culture techniques allow us to better understand the physiology of Shigella infection and faithfully reproduce the complexity of the human GI tract. Second, characterization of clinical Shigella isolates has helped to capture the diversity of this genus, identify important virulence genes, and improve our understanding of infection. We have used gastrointestinal signals like bile salts and glucose to understand how Shigella survives transit in the small intestine and regulates virulence gene expression for infection in the large intestine.We have demonstrated how Shigella resists bile salts and have shown that Shigella produces adherence proteins to help initiate contact with epithelial cells to start infection. These protocols are designed to look at key aspects of epithelial infection like adherence, invasion, and intracellular survival of Shigella. We are performing these protocols using a standard epithelial cell line, but have also adapted the methods for sophisticated human GI models that are now available.These protocols consider each phase of infection independently, which is critical to understand the key steps in Shigella infection. They also highlight that combined analyses can facilitate a greater understanding of Shigella infection at a holistic level.

Intracellular Replication Assay to Examine the Molecular Pathogenesis of Shigella

Research

JoVE Journal

Immunology and Infection

The human-adapted enteric bacterial pathogen Shigella causes millions of infections each year, creates long-term growth effects among pediatric patients, ...