Shigella flexneri, the etiologic agent of bacillary dysentery, invades epithelial cells as well as macrophages and dendritic cells and escapes into the cytosol soon after invasion. Dissection of the global gene expression profile of the bacterium in its intracellular niche is essential to fully understand the biology of Shigella infection. We have determined the complete gene expression profile...

BACKGROUND Public Health England (PHE) holds a collection of Shigella flexneri Type strains isolated between 1949 and 1972 representing 15 established serotypes and one provisional type, E1037. In this study, the genomes of all 16 PHE Type strains were sequenced using the Illumina HiSeq platform. The relationship between core genome phylogeny and serotype was examined. RESULTS The most common...

Shigella flexneri is a gram-negative bacterium responsible for serious enteric infections that occur mainly in the terminal ileum and colon. High interest in Shigella, as a human pathogen, is driven by its antibiotic resistance and the necessity to develop a vaccine against its infections. Vaccines of the last generation use carbohydrate moieties of the lipopolysaccharide as probable candidates...

In 2006, 3,531 fecal samples were collected from patients with diarrhea in Henan Province, China. A total of 467 (13.2%) Shigella strains were isolated and serotyped. Seventy-one Shigella flexneri strains were characterized by MIC determination, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and detection of genes encoding cephalosporin resistance. Most infections were caused by S. flexneri variant X...

An early step governing Shigella flexneri pathogenesis is the invasion of the colonic epithelium from the basolateral surface followed by disruption of the colonic epithelial barrier. Despite recent insight into S. flexneri-host interactions, much remains to be determined regarding the nature of the initial contact between S. flexneri and the host epithelial basolateral membrane domain. Since t...

Falkow, Stanley (Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, D.C.), H. Schneider, L. S. Baron, and S. B. Formal. Virulence of Escherichia-Shigella hybrids for the guinea pig. J. Bacteriol. 86:1251-1258. 1963.-Genetic recombination studies between donor Escherichia coli and recipient Shigella flexneri 2a strains were employed to examine alterations in the virulence of Shigella hybrids fo...

The glutamate-dependent acid-resistance system is the most effective acid tolerance pathway in Shigella, allowing survival in extremely acidic environments. However, the regulation of this system in Shigella remains elusive. In the current study, we identified significant differences in the levels of glutamate decarboxylase between three Shigella flexneri strains with different levels of acid r...

Shigella organisms are divided biochemically into two main groups distinguished by their ability to ferment mannitol. Non-mannitol-fermenting strains of Sh. flexneri type 88 (biochemical type newcastle) and of Sh. flexneri type 103 (Mumford and Mohr, 1944) are, however, well recognized, and it is probable that similar variants occur among other mannitol-fermenting dysentery bacilli. The organis...

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a surface polymer of Gram-negative bacteria, helps bacteria survive in different environments and acts as a virulence determinant of host infection. The O-antigen (Oag) component of LPS exhibits a modal chain-length distribution that is controlled by polysaccharide co-polymerases (PCPs). The molecular basis of the regulation of Oag chain-lengths remains unclear, despit...

Type III secretion (TTS) systems are used by many Gram-negative pathogens to inject virulence proteins into the cells of their hosts. Several of these virulence effectors require TTS chaperones that maintain them in a secretion-competent state. Whereas most chaperones bind only one effector, Spa15 from the human pathogen Shigella flexneri and homologous chaperones bind several seemingly unrelat...