Plague bacteria biofilm blocks food intake

Creg Darby (), Jennifer W. Hsu, Nafisa Ghori and Stanley Falkow
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Creg Darby: School of Medicine, Stanford University
Jennifer W. Hsu: School of Medicine, Stanford University
Nafisa Ghori: School of Medicine, Stanford University
Stanley Falkow: School of Medicine, Stanford University

Nature, 2002, vol. 417, issue 6886, 243-244

Abstract: Abstract Bubonic plague is transmitted to mammals, including humans, by the bites of fleas whose digestive tracts are blocked by a mass of the bacterium Yersinia pestis1. In these fleas, the plague-causing bacteria are surrounded by an extracellular matrix of unknown composition2, and the blockage depends on a group of bacterial genes known as the hmsHFRS operon3. Here we show that Y. pestis creates an hmsHFRS-dependent extracellular biofilm to inhibit feeding by the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Our results suggest that feeding obstruction in fleas is a biofilm-mediated process and that biofilms may be a bacterial defence against predation by invertebrates.

Date: 2002
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DOI: 10.1038/417243a

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