Molecular Characterisation by Infrared Spectroscopy of Bordetella pertussis Grown as Biofilm

✍ Scribed by A. Bosch; N.E. Massa; A. Donolo; O. Yantorno

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 170 KB
• Volume: 220
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0370-1972
• DOI: 10.1002/1521-3951(200007)220:1<635::aid-pssb635>3.0.co;2-l

✦ Synopsis

It is known that bacterial adhesion to tissues plays an important role in microbial infection and that organisms attached to a surface can express a characteristic phenotype. Although Bordetella pertussis, the etiological agent of whooping cough, has adapted itself to colonise the human respiratory tracts, most of the studies of the expression of their virulence factors have been obtained from bacteria cultivated as cell suspension in liquid media. In this work, we show that B. pertussis can grow attached to an abiotic surface and that this attachment stimulates the production of exopolymers (slime) leading to the formation of biofilms. By using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis, we found that these biofilm-grown cells are chemically different from the cells grown in both, liquid and solid media. Furthermore, we demonstrated that this slime is mainly composed of carbohydrates.