Like thieves that constantly look for ways to evade capture, Salmonella enterica, a disease-causing bacterium, uses various tactics to escape the human body’s defense mechanisms. In a new study, researchers from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology (MCB), IISc, highlight two such strategies that the bacterium uses to protect itself, both driven by the same protein.
When Salmonella enters the human body, each bacterial cell resides within a bubble-like structure known as Salmonella-containing vacuole (SCV). In response to the bacterial infection, the immune cells in our body produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS), along with pathways triggered to break down these SCVs and fuse them with cellular bodies called lysosomes or autophagosomes, which destroy the bacteria. However, these bacteria have developed robust mechanisms to maintain vacuolar integrity, which is crucial for their survival. For example, when a bacterial cell divides, the vacuole surrounding it also divides, enabling every new bacterial cell to be ensconced in a vacuole. This also ensures that more vacuoles are present than the number of lysosomes which can digest them.
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