CGC Bibliography Paper 5238
Caenorhabditis elegans - Plague bacteria biofilm blocks food intake.
Darby C,
Hsu JW,
Ghori N,
Falkow S
- Medline:
-
- Citation:
- Nature 417: 243-244 2002
- Type:
- ARTICLE
- Genes:
- phm-2
- 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.