Growth rates and metabolic traits differ by diarrhoeal manifestation instrains.

Abstract

is the leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Infections withcan result in two different diarrhoeal manifestations in humans: watery diarrhoea or bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea.Currently, little is known aboutand/or host factors associated with the elicitation of these two distinct diarrhoeal manifestations. We hypothesize that these factors may include growth and metabolic trait differences betweenstrains associated with watery diarrhoea and bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea.Usingstrains with a defined diarrhoeal manifestation in the neonatal piglet model, we aimed to assess differences in temperature-dependent growth rates, motility, biofilm production and carbon utilization between diarrhoeal manifestation groups.. Strains were initially assessed for 192 different carbon sources using phenotypic microarrays followed by specific carbon utilization, growth, motility and biofilm assays at 37 and/or 42 °C.. We found that at 37 °C, watery diarrhoea-associatedstrains grew significantly faster compared with bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associatedstrains. However, there was no significant growth difference at 42 °C between the groups, due to bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains growing faster at 42 °C compared with 37 °C. Additionally, at 37 °C, we found that l-fucose utilization was significantly higher among watery diarrhoea-associated strains, while l-glutamine utilization was significantly higher among bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associated strains.. The results indicate there are distinct metabolic adaptations between watery and/or bloody/inflammatory diarrhoea-associatedstrains particularly at 37 °C, which may be one of the factors associated with differing diarrhoeal manifestations.