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Research Article

High Levels of Genetic Recombination during Nasopharyngeal Carriage and Biofilm Formation in Streptococcus pneumoniae

Laura R. Marks, Ryan M. Reddinger, Anders P. Hakansson
Larry S. McDaniel, Editor
Laura R. Marks
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USAa
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Ryan M. Reddinger
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USAa
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Anders P. Hakansson
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USAa
The Witebsky Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USAb
New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, Buffalo, New York, USAc
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Larry S. McDaniel
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Roles: Editor
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DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00200-12
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ABSTRACT

Transformation of genetic material between bacteria was first observed in the 1920s using Streptococcus pneumoniae as a model organism. Since then, the mechanism of competence induction and transformation has been well characterized, mainly using planktonic bacteria or septic infection models. However, epidemiological evidence suggests that genetic exchange occurs primarily during pneumococcal nasopharyngeal carriage, which we have recently shown is associated with biofilm growth, and is associated with cocolonization with multiple strains. However, no studies to date have comprehensively investigated genetic exchange during cocolonization in vitro and in vivo or the role of the nasopharyngeal environment in these processes. In this study, we show that genetic exchange during dual-strain carriage in vivo is extremely efficient (10−2) and approximately 10,000,000-fold higher than that measured during septic infection (10−9). This high transformation efficiency was associated with environmental conditions exclusive to the nasopharynx, including the lower temperature of the nasopharynx (32 to 34°C), limited nutrient availability, and interactions with epithelial cells, which were modeled in a novel biofilm model in vitro that showed similarly high transformation efficiencies. The nasopharyngeal environmental factors, combined, were critical for biofilm formation and induced constitutive upregulation of competence genes and downregulation of capsule that promoted transformation. In addition, we show that dual-strain carriage in vivo and biofilms formed in vitro can be transformed during colonization to increase their pneumococcal fitness and also, importantly, that bacteria with lower colonization ability can be protected by strains with higher colonization efficiency, a process unrelated to genetic exchange.

IMPORTANCE Although genetic exchange between pneumococcal strains is known to occur primarily during colonization of the nasopharynx and colonization is associated with biofilm growth, this is the first study to comprehensively investigate transformation in this environment and to analyze the role of environmental and bacterial factors in this process. We show that transformation efficiency during cocolonization by multiple strains is very high (around 10−2). Furthermore, we provide novel evidence that specific aspects of the nasopharyngeal environment, including lower temperature, limited nutrient availability, and epithelial cell interaction, are critical for optimal biofilm formation and transformation efficiency and result in bacterial protein expression changes that promote transformation and fitness of colonization-deficient strains. The results suggest that cocolonization in biofilm communities may have important clinical consequences by facilitating the spread of antibiotic resistance and enabling serotype switching and vaccine escape as well as protecting and retaining poorly colonizing strains in the pneumococcal strain pool.

  • Copyright © 2012 Marks et al.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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High Levels of Genetic Recombination during Nasopharyngeal Carriage and Biofilm Formation in Streptococcus pneumoniae
Laura R. Marks, Ryan M. Reddinger, Anders P. Hakansson
mBio Sep 2012, 3 (5) e00200-12; DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00200-12

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High Levels of Genetic Recombination during Nasopharyngeal Carriage and Biofilm Formation in Streptococcus pneumoniae
Laura R. Marks, Ryan M. Reddinger, Anders P. Hakansson
mBio Sep 2012, 3 (5) e00200-12; DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00200-12
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