UC-Davis, TAMU researchers target Salmonella

Davis, Calif. — Researchers at the University of California-Davis (UC-Davis) and Texas A&M University are exploring ways to fight the Salmonella organism.

Dr. Garry Adams, professor in Texas A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, and a team of UC-Davis investigators including Andreas Baumler and Sebastian Winter, are evaluating how Salmonella exploits a host organism and how it is able to maintain survival and transmission into other hosts.

The work, published in Nature, is being funded by the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease.

Baumler, professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the UC-Davis School of Medicine and principal study investigator, says in a statement, "The human body normally has 10 times more microbes than human cells that help protect us against infection from disease-causing bacteria. We have discovered Salmonella's cunning trick that allows it to quickly take over and outgrow the beneficial microbes in our intestine."

Stimulating the host to produce tetrathionate allows Salmonella to "breathe" in the intestine, says Winter, lead article author. "This gives Salmonella a tremendous advantage over the gut bacteria that must grow by fermentation."

Therefore, because Salmonella can use the host to breathe in the intestine, it can easily spread to cause disease in the infected host and spread through diarrhea fluids to others.