“Unmasking Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia coli: A Fast and Affordable Biomimetic Urothelial Cell Culture Model.”

Prof. Marjanca Starčič Erjavec, Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Slovenia & Department of Microbiology, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Presented by the Department of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering
 

Abstract

Extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli can cause severe, sometimes fatal infections. Such strains can be hidden among other commensal E. coli in the human gut. To investigate the E. coli potential for extraintestinal infections, several methods have already been established with minor or major disadvantages. A recently developed simple, fast, and inexpensive biomimetic in vitro model based on normal porcine urothelial (NPU) cells will be presented. The model was tested using a set of control E. coli strains and, subsequently, with human E. coli strains isolated either from patients with urinary infections or from the feces of healthy individuals. A drop in viability of NPU cells was used as a measure of the pathogenicity of the individual strain tested. To visualize the subcellular events, transmission and scanning electron microscopy was performed. The strains were tested for the presence of different virulence-associated genes, phylogroup, type of core lipid, O-serotype, and type of lipopolysaccharide and a statistical analysis of possible correlations between strains' characteristics and the effect on the model was performed. Moreover, the cytokine response of the NPU cells exposed to different E. coli strains was determined. Results showed that our model has the discriminatory power to distinguish extraintestinal pathogenic from non-pathogenic E. coli strains, and to identify new, potentially pathogenic strains.

About

Marjanca Starčič Erjavec, PhD, is a full professor of molecular biology. She studied biology (undergraduate) and biochemistry and molecular biology (graduate) at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She defended her PhD thesis in bacterial molecular genetics at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is involved in research on microbial genetics and microbial pathogenesis. She teaches molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry. She was a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville in the US, at the University of Graz, Austria, at the University of Modena, Italy, at ETHZ in Zürich, Switzerland, and at the Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Science, Perm, Russia. She was also the president of the Slovenian Microbiological Society.