Abstract
The host is the main environment for bacteria, and they also expose to many antibiotics during the treatment of infectious diseases in host body. In this study, it was aimed to investigate possible changes in growth rate and expression levels of three virulence genes (foc/foc, cnf1, and usp) in a uropathogenic E. coli standard strain within the presence of ciprofloxacin, nitrofurantoin, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. The UPEC C7 strain was grown on tryptic soy broth-TSB (control), TSB + ciprofloxacin, TSB + nitrofurantoin, and TSB + trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole for determination of both growth rate and gene expression level. Antibiotics were added according to their sub-minimal inhibition concentrations. E-test was used to determine MIC values of antibiotics. Growth changes were measured in absorbance 600 nm during 24-h period. Total RNA isolations were performed after incubation for 24 h at 37 °C. Gene expression levels were determined by quantitative PCR. Tukey’s post hoc test was used for statistical analysis. According to absorbance values, it has been shown that only ciprofloxacin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole have lead significant decrease on growth rate. We also detected statistically significant differences in each gene expression levels for all antibiotics via relative quantification analysis. Fold changes in gene expression was found 0.65, 1.42, 0.23 for foc/foc gene; 0.01, 0.01, 2.84 for cnf1 gene; and 0.1, 0.01, 0.01 for usp gene in the presence of ciprofloxacin, nitrofurantoin, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, respectively. This investigation has shown that antibiotics can play a role as an environmental factor which may determine the pathogenicity of bacteria in vivo.
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Funding
This research was supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) (Project No.: 2209-a / 2015) and Research Fund of Istanbul Yeni Yuzyil University.
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We would like to inform you that our manuscript has not been accepted for publication elsewhere. The authors of the article do not want to declare anything about their interest; and there is no conflict among the authors on this paper “Alterations of growth rate and gene expression levels of UPEC by antibiotics at sub-MIC.”
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This study is dedicated to Prof. Dr. Özdem Anğ for his 85th birthday.
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Gümüş, D., Kalaycı-Yüksek, F., Yörük, E. et al. Alterations of growth rate and gene expression levels of UPEC by antibiotics at sub-MIC. Folia Microbiol 63, 451–457 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-017-0582-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-017-0582-z