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Environmental Control of Virulence Functions and Signal Transduction in Yersinia Enterocolitica

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Signal Transduction and Bacterial Virulence

Part of the book series: Medical Intelligence Unit ((MIU.LANDES))

Abstract

Among the many species of the Yersinia genus, only Y. pestis, Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica adapted to multiply at the expenses of a host that is still alive. Y. pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis are essentially rodent pathogens causing systemic diseases. Y. enterocolitica is a common human pathogen which causes gastrointestinal syndromes of various severities, ranging from mild self-limited diarrhea to mesenteric adenitis evoking an appendicitis. Although all three yersiniae invade their host via different routes, they share a common tropism for lymphoid tissue and a remarkable ability to resist the nonspecific immune response. Their main strategy seems to consist in avoiding lysis by complement and phagocytosis by polymorphonuclear leukocytes and macrophages and to form extracellular microcolonies in the infected tissue. Yersiniae succeed in infecting their host owing to the opportune production of a series of invasion and antihost proteins. The production of these proteins is tightly controlled by sophisticated regulatory networks: this rapidly ensures the survival of bacteria in hostile and changing environments. In Yersinia, genes encoding these proteins are either on the chromosome or distributed on a 70-kb plasmid called pYV, which is remarkably well conserved among the three species. In Y. enterocolitica, the chromosomal genes are mainly involved in the first steps of the infection while the pYV plasmid seems to be essentially devoted to resistance against the nonspecific immune response. We shall first describe the virulence functions and then focus on the regulation of their expression in response to environmental changes. For the sake of clarity, we will essentially deal with Y. enterocolitica and the differences with the other species will be mentioned throughout. For other reviews on yersiniae, see refs. 1–5.

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Authors
  1. Guy R. Cornelis
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  2. Maite Iriarte
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  3. Marie-Paule Sory
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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cornelis, G.R., Iriarte, M., Sory, MP. (1995). Environmental Control of Virulence Functions and Signal Transduction in Yersinia Enterocolitica . In: Signal Transduction and Bacterial Virulence. Medical Intelligence Unit. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22406-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22406-9_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

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