Bacterial contact induces polar plug disintegration to mediate whipworm egg hatching
Fig 2
Physical contact between the bacterial cell and egg is essential for S. aureus mediated hatching.
(A) Percent of T. muris eggs hatched after incubation with total overnight S. aureus culture, culture pellet resuspended in fresh media, culture supernatant filtered with a 0.22μm filter, or media control. (B) Experimental approach for determining whether a soluble hatching inducing factor is produced by S. aureus in response to exposure to eggs. Filtered supernatant from S. aureus grown with or without T. muris eggs for 4 h were transferred to a dish containing T. muris eggs. The ability of the supernatant to mediate egg hatching was evaluated over 4 hours. (C) Percent of T. muris eggs hatched after incubation with total overnight S. aureus culture or filtered supernatant obtained from S. aureus incubated with or without eggs as in (B) compared with media controls. (D) Percent of T. muris eggs hatched when placed in a 0.4μm transwell separated from bacteria or control media in the outer well compared with eggs incubated bacteria without transwell separation. Data points and error bars represent the mean and SEM from 3 independent experiments for (A) and (C). ~25 eggs per well were assessed for (A) and (C). Dots represent a single well containing ~200 eggs and bars show means and SEM from 3 independent experiments for (D). Ordinary one-way ANOVA test followed by a Tukey’s multiple comparisons test was used to compare resuspended pellet and supernatant conditions with total O/N culture for (A) and (C). Two-way ANOVA followed by a Tukey’s multiple comparisons test was used for (D). (B) was created using BioRender.com.