Type IV Pili Can Mediate Bacterial Motility within Epithelial Cells

著者: Vincent Nieto, Abby R. Kroken, Melinda R. Grosser, Benjamin E. Smith, Matteo M. E. Metruccio, Patrick Hagan, Mary E. Hallsten, David J. Evans, Suzanne M. J. Fleiszig - mBio 2019 被引用: 39

Host cell invasion can contribute to disease pathogenesis by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa . Previously, we showed that the type III secretion system (T3SS) of invasive P. aeruginosa strains modulates cell entry and subsequent escape from vacuolar trafficking to host lysosomes. However, we also showed that mutants lacking either type IV pili (T4P) or T4P-dependent twitching motility (i) were defective in traversing cell multilayers, (ii) caused less pathology in vivo , and (iii) had a reduced capacity to exit invaded cells. Here, we report that after vacuolar escape, intracellular P. aeruginosa can use T4P-dependent twitching motility to disseminate throughout the host cell cytoplasm. We further show that this strategy for intracellular dissemination does not depend on flagellin and resists both host actin and host microtubule disruption. This differs from mechanisms used by previously studied pathogens that utilize either host actin or microtubules for intracellular dissemination independently of microbe motility appendages.