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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2003, p. 5328-5332, Vol. 185, No. 17
0021-9193/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.185.17.5328-5332.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Role for Salmonella enterica Enterobacterial Common Antigen in Bile Resistance and Virulence
Francisco Ramos-Morales,1* Ana I. Prieto,1 Carmen R. Beuzón,2,
David W. Holden,2 and Josep Casadesús1
Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville 41080, Spain,1
Department of Infectious Diseases, Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection, Imperial College School of Medicine, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom2
Received 17 March 2003/
Accepted 2 June 2003

ABSTRACT
Passage through the digestive tract exposes
Salmonella enterica to high concentrations of bile salts, powerful detergents that
disrupt biological membranes. Mutations in the
wecD or
wecA gene, both of which are involved in the synthesis of enterobacterial
common antigen (ECA), render
S. enterica serovar Typhimurium
sensitive to the bile salt deoxycholate. Competitive infectivity
analysis of
wecD and
wecA mutants in the mouse model indicates
that ECA is an important virulence factor for oral infection.
In contrast, lack of ECA causes only a slight decrease in
Salmonella virulence during intraperitoneal infection. A tentative interpretation
is that ECA may contribute to
Salmonella virulence by protecting
the pathogen from bile salts.

TEXT
Bile salts are detergent-like substances that aid in the digestion
and absorption of lipids. Bile salts are secreted from the liver,
stored in the gall bladder, and released through the bile duct
into the intestine during food passage. The most abundant bile
salts in humans are cholate and deoxycholate (DOC). Enteric
bacteria are intrinsically resistant to bile salts, due both
to the low permeability of the outer membrane bilayer to these
lipophilic solutes and to active efflux mechanisms. Mutations
that impair bile salt resistance in genes for lipopolysaccharide
(LPS) synthesis (
14),
tol genes (
16), efflux pump genes (
12,
22), regulatory genes such as
marAB (
20) and
phoPQ (
25), and
the DNA adenine methyltransferase gene (
8,
17) have been previously
described.
Here we show that mutations in the wecD and wecA genes of Salmonella enterica cause sensitivity to DOC. The wec gene cluster is required for synthesis of the enterobacterial common antigen (ECA), a glycolipid found in the external leaflet of the outer membrane in all species of the family Enterobacteriaceae (reviewed in reference 18). The ECA biosynthetic pathway is diagrammed in Fig. 1. The polysaccharide portion of ECA consists of a linear trimeric repeat with the following structure:
3)
-D-Fuc4NAc-(1
4)-ß-D-ManNAcA-(1
4)-
-D-GlcNAc-(1
, where Fuc4NAc is 4-acetamido-4,6-dideoxy-D-galactose, ManNAcA is N-acetyl-D-mannosaminuronic acid, and GlcNAc is N-acetyl-D-glucosamine. The initial step in the synthesis of the repeat unit is the transfer of GlcNAc-1-phosphate from UDP-GlcNAc to undecaprenyl monophosphate to yield GlcNAc-pyrophosphorylundecaprenol (lipid I). The synthesis of lipid I is followed by the successive incorporation of ManNAcA and Fuc4NAc from the donors UDP-ManNAcA and TDP-Fuc4NAc to form lipid II and lipid III, respectively. Subsequent steps involve polymerization, transfer of the polymer to a phospholipid aglycone, and translocation to the outer membrane. Below we show that Salmonella mutants unable to synthesize ECA are highly attenuated in oral infections and slightly attenuated in intraperitoneal infections. Hence, we propose that ECA plays a role in Salmonella virulence. Such a role can be tentatively correlated with bile salt resistance.
MudJ mutagenesis identifies wecD as a locus necessary for resistance to DOC.
In an attempt to identify new genes potentially involved in
bile salt resistance in
S. enterica serovar Typhimurium, we
performed a screen for mutants sensitive to sodium deoxycholate
in strain 14028, which is virulent in mice. The strains used
in this study are described in Table
1. Mu
dJ mutagenesis was
achieved by the method of Hughes and Roth (
9). Five thousand
Km
r colonies from 10 independent mutagenesis trials were patched
in grids onto Luria-Bertani (LB) plates containing 1% DOC. Twenty-eight
DOC-sensitive (DOC
s) isolates were obtained. Reconstruction
experiments showed that 19 of 28 DOC
s isolates were resistant
to lysis by P22 HT phage. These are probably LPS mutants, since
P22 adsorbs to the O antigen (
15), and
Escherichia coli mutants
lacking a complete O side chain in LPS (rough mutants) have
been shown to display bile salt sensitivity (
14). In addition,
3 out of 14
Salmonella mutants sensitive to bile salts obtained
by Prouty et al. (
16) had a rough LPS phenotype.
Chromosomal DNA from one DOC
s P22-sensitive mutant was prepared
as previously described (
4), digested with
BamHI, and ligated
to plasmid pBluescript SK II(+). Transformants were selected
on LB plates containing 40 µg of kanamycin/ml. DNA sequencing
with the MuL primer (
23) revealed that the insertion was located
in
wecD. This gene is part of the
wec gene cluster, which is
involved in the biosynthesis and assembly of ECA. Two lines
of evidence confirmed that the
wecD mutant was sensitive to
DOC. (i) Dilutions from exponential cultures of the
wecD mutant
and the wild-type strain were spread on LB plates supplemented
with 1% DOC. Clear-cut differences between the strains under
study were found (Fig.
2). (ii) The MIC of DOC was determined
for each strain. For MIC determination, samples of 3
x 10
3 CFU/ml
from stationary-phase cultures were subjected to various concentrations
of DOC in polypropylene microtiter plates (Greiner, Frickenhausen,
Germany). After an overnight incubation at 37°C, the MIC
for the
wecD mutant was found to be 0.1%, compared to 4% for
the wild type.
DOC sensitivity of wec mutants is due to failure to synthesize ECA.
Studies with
E. coli have reported that null mutations in
wecE or
wecF confer sensitivity to MacConkey agar (which contains
bile salts) and that this phenotype is caused by accumulation
of lipid II, an ECA biosynthetic intermediate (
5). According
to the same study, the
wecE wecA and
wecF wecA double mutants,
which are unable to synthesize ECA but which do not accumulate
lipid II, are able to grow on MacConkey agar. Results for the
wecA single mutant were not shown in that study (
5). A
wecD mutant can be also expected to accumulate lipid II (Fig.
1).
To investigate if the absence of ECA without accumulation of
lipid II could cause DOC sensitivity in
Salmonella, we tested
a
wecA mutant previously isolated in our laboratory (
6,
11).
The MIC determined for the
wecA mutant was 0.2%, slightly higher
than that for the
wecD mutant but well below the MIC for the
wild type (Fig.
2). A nearly identical MIC for the
wecD wecA double mutant was obtained (Fig.
2). These experiments suggest
that in
Salmonella the absence of ECA, rather than the accumulation
of lipid II, is the cause of DOC sensitivity.
S. enterica wec mutants are severely attenuated in the mouse model.
During a natural infection, Salmonella encounters DOC and other bile salts in the gut. Since wec mutants are 40-fold more sensitive to DOC than the wild type, we reasoned that wec mutations might cause attenuation specifically in orally inoculated mice. To test this hypothesis, 8-week-old female BALB/c mice (Charles River Laboratories, Santa Perpetua de Mogoda, Spain) were subjected to mixed infections with wec mutants. Groups of three or four animals were inoculated with a 1:1 ratio of the mutant and the wild type. For oral inoculation, bacteria were grown overnight at 37°C in LB without shaking. For intraperitoneal inoculation, bacteria were grown overnight at 37°C in LB with shaking, diluted into fresh medium (1:100), and grown until an optical density at 600 nm of 0.35 to 0.6 was reached. Oral inoculation was performed by feeding the mice 25 µl of saline containing 0.1% lactose and 108 bacteria. Intraperitoneal inoculation was performed with 0.2 ml of physiological saline containing 105 CFU. Bacteria were recovered from the spleen 48 h after intraperitoneal inoculation or 6 days after oral inoculation, and CFU were enumerated on selective medium (LB with 40 µg of kanamycin/ml for wecD and 20 µg of tetracycline/ml for wecA). A competitive index (CI) for each mutant, the ratio between the mutant and the wild-type strain in the output (bacteria recovered from the host after infection) divided by their ratio in the input (initial inoculum), was calculated (7, 21). The CI is a sensitive measure of the relative degree of virulence attenuation caused by a given mutation (3). wecD and wecA mutants were significantly outcompeted by the wild-type strain in both intraperitoneal and oral infections (Fig. 3). A detailed analysis of the CIs obtained indicates that both mutants are slightly attenuated in intraperitoneal infections (CI, 0.2 to 0.4) but severely attenuated in oral infections (CI < 0.005). The results obtained after intraperitoneal inoculations are consistent with an earlier report suggesting a small but significant difference in virulence between ECA-producing and ECA-deficient strains of S. enterica serovar Typhimurium (24). In that study, the difference in 50% lethal doses was about 10-fold. A subsequent study indicated that the apparently higher virulence of ECA-positive strains was due to their increased survival in mice and that this could be only partially attributed to their ECA-positive character (13). These data, together with the finding that ECA does not possess endotoxin-like activity (10) and the failure of anti-ECA antibodies to protect against salmonellosis (19), prompted the view that ECA was not a significant determinant of virulence (18). In contrast, our results with oral infections show that wec genes have a significant role in virulence. The different behaviors exhibited by wec mutants in oral and intraperitoneal experiments are in agreement with the hypothesis that ECA may be required for resistance to DOC in the small intestine.
Different degrees of attenuation in wecD and wecA mutants.
The analysis of CIs of
wec mutants against the wild-type strain
yields another interesting conclusion. Although both
wecD and
wecA mutants were significantly outcompeted by the wild-type
strain in oral infections, the CI of the
wecD mutant in oral
infections was lower than the CI of the
wecA mutant. Statistical
analysis (Student's
t test) showed that this difference was
significant (
P = 0.0009). In pursuit of a more precise comparison
of
wecD and
wecA mutants, we tested them in a direct-competition
experiment. The CI for the
wecD mutant versus the
wecA mutant
in oral infections was 0.39 (Fig.
3), and statistical analysis
indicates that this value is significantly different from 1
(
P = 0.0008). This result confirms that a
wecD mutant is more
attenuated than a
wecA mutant. One difference between these
mutants is that the
wecD strain is expected to accumulate lipid
II (
5) (Fig.
1). Altogether, these results suggest that ECA
is an important virulence factor per se and that the accumulation
of the lipid II intermediate might cause further attenuation.
If this hypothesis is correct, a double mutant carrying null
mutations in
wecD and
wecA should be as attenuated in oral infections
as the
wecA single mutant, since the double mutant does not
accumulate lipid II. To test this prediction, we constructed
a
wecD wecA double mutant by P22 HT transduction and determined
the CI value for this strain versus the wild type. Data shown
in Table
2 and Fig.
3 indicate that the
wecD wecA double mutant
is highly attenuated in oral infections. However, the CI for
this strain is significantly higher than the CI for the
wecD single mutant and not significantly different from the CI for
the
wecA mutant (
P values [Student's
t test] of 0.0034 and 0.0952,
respectively). These data support the view that lack of ECA
causes a decrease in virulence and that a further decrease occurs
if lipid II is accumulated.
Role of ECA in Salmonella virulence.
Despite the unique and universal occurrence of ECA in the family
Enterobacteriaceae, its biological function remains unknown.
Several lines of evidence presented in this study support a
role for ECA in both the resistance to bile salts and the virulence
of
S. enterica serovar Typhimurium in the mouse model. Our results
also suggest that both traits may be related, since the attenuation
of
wec mutants is more significant in oral than in intraperitoneal
infections. A recent study (
1) suggested that extracellular
polysaccharides of uropathogenic
E. coli are virulence determinants
in the murine urinary tract. However, the CI displayed by a
wecE mutant against the wild-type strain was not significantly
different from 1 (which indicates no attenuation) for the bladder
or the kidney and around the limit of significance for the urine
(
P = 0.05) (
1). In contrast, the CI's displayed by
S. enterica wecA and
wecD mutants are extremely low and statistically significant,
especially after oral inoculation (
P < 0.0001). This high
degree of attenuation is consistent with the failure of
wec mutants to resist the bactericidal effect of bile salts. Neither
defect can be attributed to the accumulation of lipid II since
a
wecA mutant, in which lipid II does not accumulate, is also
attenuated in mice and sensitive to DOC.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by grants QLRT-PL-00310 from the European
Union and BIO2001-0232-C02-02 from the Ministry of Science and
Technology of Spain. A stay of F.R.-M. at the Imperial College,
London, was partially supported by a grant from the Regional
Government of Andalusia. F.R.-M. is an investigator of the Ramón
y Cajal program from the Ministry of Science and Technology
of Spain.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Sevilla, Apdo. 1095, 41080 Seville, Spain. Phone: 34 954557106. Fax: 34 954557104. E-mail:
framos{at}us.es.

Present address: Dep. Biología Celular, Genética y Fisiología, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos, 29071 Málaga, Spain. 

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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2003, p. 5328-5332, Vol. 185, No. 17
0021-9193/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.185.17.5328-5332.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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