Effect of periphytic Escherichia coli and lake water bacterial population on the biofilm establishment of a Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 strain

Biofilm studies Escherichia coli (E. coli) have typically focused on 0157:H7 in \ndefined, laboratory medium. While there is value in such studies, they offer little in the \nway of explaining the behaviour and interactions of this group of bacteria with other \nenvironmental bacteria under biofilm conditions. Furthermore, with evidence mounting to \nsupport the persistence of naturalized populations of E. coli in the environment, a study to \ndetermine the effect of the naturalized E. coli and other environmental microbial \npopulations on the biofilm development of E. coli 0157:H7 is called for. \nThe biofilm developments of E. coli H32 strain (a pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 strain), \nE coli 1A strain (isolated from a periphyton sample collected at Boulevard Lake, Thunder \nBay, Ontario, Canada) and a microbial population collected from Boulevard Lake were \nexamined using confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM). Biofilm formation was studied in a minimal salt medium supplemented with 0.04% glucose (MSMG). The CSLM \nallowed for the determination of biofilm structures. It was observed that the periphytic E. \nco//strain was able to form a thick (approximately 40 pm) structured biofilm which water \nchannels and mushroom-like pillars were observed. The pathogenic E. co//strain H32, \nwas unable to form a structured biofilm. The biofilm was scarce forming a monolayer of \ncoverage. The lake water microbial population was able to form a structured biofilm with lots of variations in structures from mounds to thin layers of cell coverage. The biofilm \nthickness was very diverse ranging from 5 to 30 Mm. \nIn addition, the effect of the periphytic E. coli 1A strain and the lake water bacterial \npopulation on the biofilm establishment of the E. coli 0157:H7 H32 strain was examined. \nIn order to study the interactions between the two E coli strains, a rifampicin resistant \nmutant of 1A (1A-Rif) and a green fluorescent protein gene (gfp) labelled and kanamycin \nresistant H32 mutant (H32-gfp) were created. These two mutant strains were used to \nreplace the 1A and H32 strains in the mixed culture study. Three treatments were \nperformed in the mixed culture study. The first treatment was to determine the biofilm \nestablishment of the pathogenic H32-gfp strain when exposed to a pre-established \nperiphytic E. coli 1A-Rif biofilm. The inoculum densities of the H32-gfp strain in this treatment were 1x10[superscript 7], 1x10 [superscript 6], 1x10[superscript 5] and 1x10 [superscript 4] CFU/mL and the biofilm cell densities of \nH32-gfp and 1 A-Rif were determined by drop-plating after 48 h. At the inoculum density \nof 1x10[superscript 7] CFU/mL of H32-gfp, the pre-established lA-RIf biofilm helped H32-gfp to form more blofilm by increasing the biofllm density of H32-gfp by a magnitude of 1 log, when compared with the monoculture H32-gfp biofilm cell density in the absence of the preestablished 1 A-Rif biofilm. However, at inoculum densities of 1x10[superscript 5] and 1x10 [superscript 4] CFU/mL, the 1 A-Rif biofilm decreased the ability of H32-gfp to form biofllm significantly (p<0.05). The inverse of this experiment was performed where the 1 A-Rif strain was exposed to a pre-established H32-gfp biofilm. In this setting, the pre-established H32-gfp biofilm significantly decreased the ability of 1 A-Rif to form biofilm (p<0.05) regardless the inoculum densities of 1 A-Rif ranging from 1x10 [superscript 7] and 1x10 [superscript 4] CFU/mL.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.