Infection of Melissococcus plutonius clonal complex 12 strain in European honeybee larvae is essentially confined to the digestive tract.

ABSTRACT: Melissococcus plutonius is an important pathogen that causes European foulbrood (EFB) in honeybee larvae. Recently, we discovered a group of M. plutonius strains that are phenotypically and genetically distinct from other strains. These strains belong to clonal complex (CC) 12, as determined by multilocus sequence typing analysis, and show atypical cultural and biochemical characteristics in vitro compared with strains of other CCs tested. Although EFB is considered to be a purely intestinal infection according to early studies, it is unknown whether the recently found CC12 strains cause EFB by the same pathomechanism. In this study, to obtain a better understanding of EFB, we infected European honeybee (Apis mellifera) larvae per os with a well-characterized CC12 strain, DAT561, and analy

SUBMITTER: Takamatsu D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4751113 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature