New research reveals how Salmonella enterica spread in the gut and gallbladder—a subpopulation of Salmonella primed for invasion rapidly replicate in the host cell cytosol such that bacteria-laden cells are extruded out of the epithelial-cell layer releasing invasive Salmonella into the gastrointestinal and biliary lumen. Leigh Knodler and colleagues write that other mucosal-dwelling pathogens could use this “host cell process as an exit strategy”.
Salmonella species can cause a range of infections from typhoid fever to food poisoning. Ordinarily, the intracellular bacteria Salmonella enterica resides and replicates within a membrane-bound vacuole in epithelial cells. During its life cycle, the bacteria are adapted to survive within a wide range of environmental niches within the human host (including cells such as enterocytes and macrophages and organs such as the spleen and gastrointestinal tract).
Knodler et al. observed a subpopulation of Salmonella that were ‘hyper-replicating’; these bacteria were doubling in number at almost five times the rate of the overall population of bacteria in the epithelial cell. Not only that, these bacteria were rapidly proliferating not in the Salmonella-containing vacuole, but in the host cell cytosol (which is believed to be nutrient rich) and were ready to invade other cells (they expressed type III secretion system 1 components and flagella, virulence factors that are required for invasion). Moreover, epithelial cells overloaded with these hyper-replicating cytosolic Salmonella were forced out of the apical side of the epithelial-cell layer—just as when dying cells are extruded out of the epithelium during the normal rapid turnover of epithelial cells that occurs to maintain the gut epithelium. Subsequently, invasive bacteria are released into the lumen and are primed and ready to infect new cells. The extruded host cells then die in a caspase-1-dependent manner and trigger the production of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 18—a process which could, in part, explain the high levels of mucosal inflammation observed in Salmonella infections of the gut and gallbladder.
Knodler, L., Vallance, B., Celli, J., Winfree, S., Hansen, B., Montero, M., & Steele-Mortimer, O. (2010). Dissemination of invasive Salmonella via bacterial-induced extrusion of mucosal epithelia Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (41), 17733-17738 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006098107