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DNA methylation modulates Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium virulence in Caenorhabditis elegans
Author(s) -
Oza Javin P.,
Yeh Jimmy B.,
Reich Norbert O.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
fems microbiology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1574-6968
pISSN - 0378-1097
DOI - 10.1016/j.femsle.2005.02.030
Subject(s) - virulence , salmonella enterica , caenorhabditis elegans , salmonella , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , enterobacteriaceae , escherichia coli , serotype , mutant , bacteria , methylation , dna , genetics , gene
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium was previously shown to be virulent in Caenorhabditis elegans. Here we demonstrate that DNA adenine methyltransferase (DAM) modulates Salmonella virulence in the nematode, as it does in mice. After 5 days of continual exposure to bacteria, twice as many worms died when exposed to the wild‐type than the dam ‐mutant strain of Salmonella . Similar trends in virulence were observed when worms were exposed to Salmonella strains for 5 h and transferred to the avirulent Escherichia coli OP50. While a 10‐fold attenuation was observed in the absence of DAM, the dam ‐strain was still able to infect and persist in the host worm. Our results further support the use of C. elegans as an accessible and readily studied animal model of bacterial pathogenesis. However, our results suggest that crucial host responses differ between the murine and nematode models. Additionally, we carried out preliminary liquid culture based experiments with the long term goal of developing high throughput animal based screens of DAM inhibitors.

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