1
|
Bourgeois JS, You SS, Clendenen LH, Shrestha M, Petnicki-Ocwieja T, Telford SR, Hu LT. Comparative reservoir competence of Peromyscus leucopus, C57BL/6J, and C3H/HeN for Borrelia burgdorferi B31. Appl Environ Microbiol 2024; 90:e0082224. [PMID: 38899883 PMCID: PMC11267898 DOI: 10.1128/aem.00822-24] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2024] [Accepted: 06/01/2024] [Indexed: 06/21/2024] Open
Abstract
Borrelia burgdorferi, a Lyme disease spirochete, causes a range of acute and chronic maladies in humans. However, a primary vertebrate reservoir in the United States, the white-footed deermouse Peromyscus leucopus, is reported not to have reduced fitness following infection. Although laboratory strains of Mus musculus mice have successfully been leveraged to model acute human Lyme disease, the ability of these rodents to model B. burgdorferi-P. leucopus interactions remains understudied. Here, we compared infection of P. leucopus with B. burgdorferi B31 with infection of the traditional B. burgdorferi murine models-C57BL/6J and C3H/HeN Mus musculus, which develop signs of inflammation akin to human disease. We find that B. burgdorferi was able to reach much higher burdens (10- to 30-times higher) in multiple M. musculus skin sites and that the overall dynamics of infection differed between the two rodent species. We also found that P. leucopus remained transmissive to larval Ixodes scapularis for a far shorter period than either M. musculus strain. In line with these observations, we found that P. leucopus does launch a modest but sustained inflammatory response against B. burgdorferi in the skin, which we hypothesize leads to reduced bacterial viability and rodent-to-tick transmission in these hosts. Similarly, we also observe evidence of inflammation in infected P. leucopus hearts. These observations provide new insight into reservoir species and the B. burgdorferi enzootic cycle.IMPORTANCEA Lyme disease-causing bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, must alternate between infecting a vertebrate host-usually rodents or birds-and ticks. In order to be successful in that endeavor, the bacteria must avoid being killed by the vertebrate host before it can infect a new larval tick. In this work, we examine how B. burgdorferi and one of its primary vertebrate reservoirs, Peromyscus leucopus, interact during an experimental infection. We find that B. burgdorferi appears to colonize its natural host less successfully than conventional laboratory mouse models, which aligns with a sustained seemingly anti-bacterial response by P. leucopus against the microbe. These data enhance our understanding of P. leucopus host-pathogen interactions and could potentially serve as a foundation to uncover ways to disrupt the spread of B. burgdorferi in nature.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jeffrey S. Bourgeois
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Stephanie S. You
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Luke H. Clendenen
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Muskan Shrestha
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Tanja Petnicki-Ocwieja
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Sam R. Telford
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health, Tufts University, North Grafton, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Linden T. Hu
- Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Tufts University, Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Rondel FM, Farooq H, Hosseini R, Juyal A, Knyazev S, Mangul S, Rogovskyy AS, Zelikovsky A. Estimating Enzyme Expression and Metabolic Pathway Activity in Borreliella-Infected and Uninfected Mice. J Comput Biol 2024. [PMID: 38934087 DOI: 10.1089/cmb.2024.0564] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/28/2024] Open
Abstract
Evaluating changes in metabolic pathway activity is essential for studying disease mechanisms and developing new treatments, with significant benefits extending to human health. Here, we propose EMPathways2, a maximum likelihood pipeline that is based on the expectation-maximization algorithm, which is capable of evaluating enzyme expression and metabolic pathway activity level. We first estimate enzyme expression from RNA-seq data that is used for simultaneous estimation of pathway activity levels using enzyme participation levels in each pathway. We implement the novel pipeline to RNA-seq data from several groups of mice, which provides a deeper look at the biochemical changes occurring as a result of bacterial infection, disease, and immune response. Our results show that estimated enzyme expression, pathway activity levels, and enzyme participation levels in each pathway are robust and stable across all samples. Estimated activity levels of a significant number of metabolic pathways strongly correlate with the infected and uninfected status of the respective rodent types.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Hafsa Farooq
- Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
| | - Roya Hosseini
- Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
| | - Akshay Juyal
- Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
| | - Sergey Knyazev
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Serghei Mangul
- Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Artem S Rogovskyy
- Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
| | | |
Collapse
|
3
|
Kumaresan V, Ingle TM, Kilgore N, Zhang G, Hermann BP, Seshu J. Cellular and transcriptome signatures unveiled by single-cell RNA-Seq following ex vivo infection of murine splenocytes with Borrelia burgdorferi. Front Immunol 2023; 14:1296580. [PMID: 38149246 PMCID: PMC10749944 DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1296580] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2023] [Accepted: 11/06/2023] [Indexed: 12/28/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne infectious disease in the US, is caused by a spirochetal pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb). Distinct host responses are observed in susceptible and resistant strains of inbred of mice following infection with Bb reflecting a subset of inflammatory responses observed in human Lyme disease. The advent of post-genomic methodologies and genomic data sets enables dissecting the host responses to advance therapeutic options for limiting the pathogen transmission and/or treatment of Lyme disease. Methods In this study, we used single-cell RNA-Seq analysis in conjunction with mouse genomics exploiting GFP-expressing Bb to sort GFP+ splenocytes and GFP- bystander cells to uncover novel molecular and cellular signatures that contribute to early stages of immune responses against Bb. Results These data decoded the heterogeneity of splenic neutrophils, macrophages, NK cells, B cells, and T cells in C3H/HeN mice in response to Bb infection. Increased mRNA abundance of apoptosis-related genes was observed in neutrophils and macrophages clustered from GFP+ splenocytes. Moreover, complement-mediated phagocytosis-related genes such as C1q and Ficolin were elevated in an inflammatory macrophage subset, suggesting upregulation of these genes during the interaction of macrophages with Bb-infected neutrophils. In addition, the role of DUSP1 in regulating the expression of Casp3 and pro-inflammatory cytokines Cxcl1, Cxcl2, Il1b, and Ccl5 in Bb-infected neutrophils were identified. Discussion These findings serve as a growing catalog of cell phenotypes/biomarkers among murine splenocytes that can be exploited for limiting spirochetal burden to limit the transmission of the agent of Lyme disease to humans via reservoir hosts.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Venkatesh Kumaresan
- Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
- South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| | - Taylor MacMackin Ingle
- Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
- South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| | - Nathan Kilgore
- Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
- South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| | - Guoquan Zhang
- Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
- South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| | - Brian P. Hermann
- Department of Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| | - Janakiram Seshu
- Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
- South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States
| |
Collapse
|