Salmonella's judo move - turning host metabolism to its advantage

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-01-22 06:00

International

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA

In an infection, there is a continual battle between the pathogen and the cells it's invading. An Israeli study finds that the bacterium Salmonella enterica can sense when cells it has infected are changing their metabolism as they prepare to attack the parasite. This triggers the bacterium to also change its metabolism to protect itself. The bacterium uses the same metabolic signal – the sugar succinate – as a food source when in cells that don’t attack it, illustrating the adaptive nature of their metabolism. This may be a method used by other intracellular pathogens as well.

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conference: Science

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Organisation/s: Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Funder: This work was supported by the European Research Committee (ERC grant no. 756653), the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1890/17), the Minerva Foundation with funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the Estate of David Turner, the Merle S. Cahn Foundation, the Estate of Sylvia Holder, the Estate of Zvia Zeroni, and the Estate of Leah Arbel. R.A. is the Incumbent of the Philip Harris and Gerald Ronson Career Development Chair. Partial funding was provided to E.O. by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF 271/16 and 2164/16).

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