Description:

Title:

Clostridioides difficile Subverts Nutritional Immunity through Formation of Iron-Storage Organelles

Speaker:

Hualiang Pi, PhD, Postoctoral Fellow, Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and ImmunologyVanderbilt UniversityMedical Center,

Topic:

The iron homeostatic systems are largely undefined in the human pathogen Clostridioides difficile. In this study, we demonstrated that C. difficile undergoes an intracellular iron biomineralization process, stores iron in membrane-bound ferrosome organelles containing non-crystalline iron phosphate biominerals, and the ferrosome system is required for bacterial colonization and survival in the inflamed gut to combat calprotectin-mediated iron sequestration. The discovery of ferrosome nanoparticles in pathogenic bacteria has the potential to reshape our understanding of host-pathogen interactions during infection, redefine the concept of trace element storage in anaerobes, unveil important insight into how gut microbes cope with changes in elemental levels within the host, and provide a prototype for production of metal nanoparticles and drug delivery vesicles, opening countless new avenues of research.

Host:

M.-N. Frances Yap, PhD

Associate Professsoor

Bacteriology Faculty Search Committee

Dept. of Microbiology-Immunology

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Chicago, IL