Flagellum and toxin phase variation impacts intestinal colonization and disease development in a mouse model of <i>Clostridioides difficile</i> infection.

ABSTRACT: Clostridioides difficile is a major nosocomial pathogen that can cause severe, toxin-mediated diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis. Recent work has shown that C. difficile exhibits heterogeneity in swimming motility and toxin production in vitro through phase variation by site-specific DNA recombination. The recombinase RecV reversibly inverts the flagellar switch sequence upstream of the flgB operon, leading to the ON/OFF expression of flagellum and toxin genes. How this phenomenon impacts C. difficile virulence in vivo remains unknown. We identified mutations in the right inverted repeat that reduced or prevented flagellar switch inversion by RecV. We introduced these mutations into C. difficile R20291 to create strains with the flagellar

SUBMITTER: Trzilova D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8890394 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature