393: Prokaryote Partner Prevents Pathogen Potency

This episode: Bacterial symbionts of amoebas help them survive
bacterial infection, and prevent pathogens from spreading to
others as much!


Download Episode (7.5 MB, 8.1 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Eubacterium dolichum

News item

Takeaways
Amoebas are free-living, single-celled organisms, but they have
some things in common with some cells of our immune system
(macrophages). For example, certain bacterial pathogens can
infect both in similar ways. So it can be useful to study the
interactions of amoebas and bacteria to learn about our own
immune defenses.

In this study, the amoeba Acanthamoeba castellanii has another
bacterial symbiont that helps it resist killing by the bacterial
pathogen Legionella pneumophila. Once the amoebas recovered from
the infection, they were more resistant to future challenges.
Even better, the symbiont prevented the pathogen from
transforming into a more spreadable form like it does when
infecting amoebas alone.

Journal Paper:
König L, Wentrup C, Schulz F, Wascher F, Escola S, Swanson MS,
Buchrieser C, Horn M. 2019. Symbiont-Mediated Defense against
Legionella pneumophila in Amoebae. mBio 10:e00333-19.


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