Chlamydia trachomatis Plasmid Gene Protein 3 Is Essential for the Establishment of Persistent Infection and Associated Immunopathology
| Autor: | Harlan D. Caldwell, Grant McClarty, Laszlo Kari, Ian N. Moore, Chunfu Yang, Lei Lei, John H. Carlson, Kevin W. Bock, Li Ma, William M. Whitmire, Claire E. Couch, Christine Bonner |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Sexually transmitted disease
Virulence Factors Antimicrobial peptides Chlamydia trachomatis Biology medicine.disease_cause urologic and male genital diseases Microbiology Host-Microbe Biology Mice antimicrobial peptides Bacterial Proteins Virology Immunopathology plasmid medicine Animals Humans Chlamydia Pathogen Antigens Bacterial persistent infection Innate immune system Epithelial Cells Chlamydia Infections medicine.disease female genital diseases and pregnancy complications QR1-502 Mice Inbred C57BL Immunology Cytokines Macaca Female Endometritis HeLa Cells Research Article |
| Zdroj: | mBio mBio, Vol 11, Iss 4 (2020) |
| ISSN: | 2150-7511 |
| Popis: | Chlamydia trachomatis can cause persistent infection that drives damaging inflammatory responses resulting in infertility and blindness. Little is known about chlamydial genes that cause persistence or factors that drive damaging pathology. In this work, we show that the C. trachomatis plasmid protein gene 3 (Pgp3) is the essential virulence factor for establishing persistent female genital tract infection and provide supportive evidence that Pgp3 functions similarly in a nonhuman primate trachoma model. We further show that persistent Ppg3-dependent infection drives damaging immunopathology. These results are important advances in understanding the pathophysiology of chlamydial persistence. Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes blinding trachoma and sexually transmitted disease afflicting hundreds of millions of people globally. A fundamental but poorly understood pathophysiological characteristic of chlamydial infection is the propensity to cause persistent infection that drives damaging inflammatory disease. The chlamydial plasmid is a virulence factor, but its role in the pathogenesis of persistent infection capable of driving immunopathology is unknown. Here, we show by using mouse and nonhuman primate infection models that the secreted plasmid gene protein 3 (Pgp3) is essential for establishing persistent infection. Ppg3-dependent persistent genital tract infection resulted in a severe endometritis caused by an intense infiltration of endometrial submucosal macrophages. Pgp3 released from the cytosol of lysed infected oviduct epithelial cells, not organism outer membrane-associated Pgp3, inhibited the chlamydial killing activity of antimicrobial peptides. Genetic Pgp3 rescue experiments in cathelin-related antimicrobial peptide (CRAMP)-deficient mice showed Pgp3-targeted antimicrobial peptides to subvert innate immunity as a pathogenic strategy to establish persistent infection. These findings provide important advances in understanding the role of Pgp3 in the pathogenesis of persistent chlamydial infection and associated immunopathology. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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