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Caenorhabditis elegans: plague bacteria biofilm blocks food intake
Authors:Darby Creg  Hsu Jennifer W  Ghori Nafisa  Falkow Stanley
Institution:Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA. cdarby@stanford.edu
Abstract:Bubonic plague is transmitted to mammals, including humans, by the bites of fleas whose digestive tracts are blocked by a mass of the bacterium Yersinia pestis. In these fleas, the plague-causing bacteria are surrounded by an extracellular matrix of unknown composition, and the blockage depends on a group of bacterial genes known as the hmsHFRS operon. Here we show that Y. pestis creates an hmsHFRS-dependent extracellular biofilm to inhibit feeding by the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Our results suggest that feeding obstruction in fleas is a biofilm-mediated process and that biofilms may be a bacterial defence against predation by invertebrates.
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