29 September 2008

Acanthamoeba in vitro to co-culture the bacteria that cause tularemia: A model system in multiple laboratories in Europe and North America.

The following is a short list of publications that focus on the study of Acanthamoeba protozoan parasites cultured in vitro with bacteria such as those that cause tularemia.

Tularemia (Francisella tularensis)

1. Gustafson K. 1989. Growth and survival of four strains of Francisella tularensis in a rich medium preconditioned with Acanthamoeba palestinensis. Canadian J of Microbiology 35: 1100-1104. (The sole author is from Umea, Sweden (Swedish National Defense Research Institute).

2. Abd H, Johansson T, Golovliov I, Sandstrom G, Forsman. Survival and Growth of Francisella tularensis in Acanthamoeba castellanii. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 2003. 69:600-606. (The authors are from Umea, Sweden (Swedish Defense Research Agency and Dept of Clinical Microbiology Umea University), and Stockholm, Sweden (the Karolinska Institute and Huddinge Hospital).

3. Hassett DJ, Limbach PA, Hennigan RF, Klose KE, Hancock REW, Platt MD, Hunt DF. Bacterial biofilms of importance to medicine and bioterrorism: proteomic techniques to identify novel vaccine components and drug targets. Expert Opinion Biol Ther 2003. 3(8): 1201-1207. (University of Cincinnati, Ohio).

4. Lauriano CM, Barker JR, Yoon S-S, Nano FE, Arulanandam BP, Hassett DJ, Klose KE. MglA regulates transcription of virulence factors necessary for Francisella tularensis intraamoebae and intramacrophage survival. 2004. Proc Natl Acad Sci (PNAS) 101(12): 4246-4249. (The authors are from UTHSC, San Antonio, Texas, U.Cincinnati, Ohio, U. of Victoria, BC, Canada). Edited by Dr. Stanley Falkow, Stanford University, California, USA).

5. Additional grants and abstracts on Acanthamoeba-Francisella, interactions involving labs in the USA and Sweden, can be found online.

A more general “mini-review” article that focuses on “Amoebae as Training Grounds for Intracellular Bacterial Pathogens”, but that focuses on Legionella bacteria instead of Francisella tularensis bacteria, was published in 2005: Molmeret M, Horn M, Wagner M, Santic M, Kwaik YA. Applied and Environ Microbiology 71:20-28. (Authors are from the U. of Louisville, Kentucky, the U. of Vienna, Austria, and the U. of Rijeka, Croatia).

Other labs have also published on Acanthamoeba as an in vitro model system using Legionella or Vibrio Cholerae. For example, in 2006 researchers from Fudan University, School of Public Health in Shanghai, China published a paper titled “Study of the growth of Vibrio cholerae O139 within Acanthamoeba polyphaga and its survival in the cysts in low temperature” in the journal “Zhonghua Liu Xing Bing Xue Za Zhi 27(4):339-342. The authors are Li O, Jiang OW, Chen HY, Shen J, Chen, Shao YO, Tan JD, Li ZH.

Although Francisella have not been found in nature to be present inside Acanthamoeba protozoan parasites, co-cultures of Francisella tularensis and Acanthamoeba have been established in vitro over the past 20 years, in multiple labs in Europe and North America.

Daniel R. Lucey, MD

EROne Institutes, Washington Hospital Center

Adjunct Professor, Microbiology and immunology

Georgetown University Medical Center

Washington D.C.

Website for this posting: www.BePast.org

Email: DRL23@Georgetown.edu