Nutritional Basis of E. coli
Colonization of the Mouse Intestine
There are both non-pathogenic strains of E. coli that
inhabit (colonize) the mammalian intestine for long periods of time as
well as pathogenic strains that don’t colonize the intestine for long
periods, but cause disease. Essentially nothing is known about the
nutrition of pathogenic and non-pathogenic E. coli strains in the
intestine. The goal of our research is to identify the sugars that
non-pathogenic and pathogenic strains of E. coli utilize for growth in the
mouse intestine and determine whether they are the same or different. Our
data to date suggest that some non-pathogenic strains of E. coli utilize
different sugars than other non-pathogenic E. coli strains in the
intestine and that pathogenic strains of E. coli can utilize still other
sugars for growth in the intestine. The data obtained in these studies may
result in a nutritional explanation as to how humans can be colonized with
several non-pathogenic E. coli strains simultaneously and may help to
determine whether there is a nutritional explanation as to why some humans
develop intestinal disease and some do not when all are exposed to the
same pathogenic E. coli strains. Furthermore, the data obtained may
eventually allow us to construct non-pathogenic E. coli strains that may
protect humans against intestinal E. coli pathogens. The 2009 RI-INBRE
SURF Fellow that works on this project will learn to generate deletions in
genes of interest in both pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains of E. coli
based on known DNA sequences available in genomic databases and will learn
to run intestinal colonization studies with these mutants in mice.
