Journal article

Attachment and Invasion of Neisseria meningitidis to Host Cells Is Related to Surface Hydrophobicity, Bacterial Cell Size and Capsule

Stephanie N Bartley, Yih-Ling Tzeng, Kathryn Heel, Chiang W Lee, Shakeel Mowlaboccus, Torsten Seemann, Wei Lu, Ya-Hsun Lin, Catherine S Ryan, Christopher Peacock, David S Stephens, John K Davies, Charlene M Kahler

PLOS ONE | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE | Published : 2013

Abstract

We compared exemplar strains from two hypervirulent clonal complexes, strain NMB-CDC from ST-8/11 cc and strain MC58 from ST-32/269 cc, in host cell attachment and invasion. Strain NMB-CDC attached to and invaded host cells at a significantly greater frequency than strain MC58. Type IV pili retained the primary role for initial attachment to host cells for both isolates regardless of pilin class and glycosylation pattern. In strain MC58, the serogroup B capsule was the major inhibitory determinant affecting both bacterial attachment to and invasion of host cells. Removal of terminal sialylation of lipooligosaccharide (LOS) in the presence of capsule did not influence rates of attachment or i..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council


Awarded by National Institutes of Health


Funding Acknowledgements

SB was supported by a PhD scholarship from the Amanda Young Foundation (http://www.amandayoungfoundation.org.au/). CMK and JKD are supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP546003). YT and DSS are supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01-AI061031 to YT). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.