RESUMO
Clostridium difficile is a Gram-positive, sporogenic and anaerobic bacterium that causes a potentially fatal colitis. C. difficile enters the body as dormant spores that germinate in the colon to form vegetative cells that secrete toxins and cause the symptoms of infection. During transit through the intestine, some vegetative cells transform into spores, which are more resistant to killing by environmental insults than the vegetative cells. Understanding the inherent resistance properties of the vegetative and spore forms of C. difficile is imperative for the development of methods to target and destroy the bacterium. The objective of this study was to define the chemical and environmental resistance properties of C. difficile vegetative cells and spores. We examined vegetative cell and spore tolerances of three C. difficile strains, including 630Δerm, a 012 ribotype and a derivative of a past epidemic strain; R20291, a 027 ribotype and current epidemic strain; and 5325, a clinical isolate that is a 078 ribotype. All isolates were tested for tolerance to ethanol, oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, butanol, chloroform, heat and sodium hypochlorite (household bleach). Our results indicate that 630Δerm vegetative cells (630 spo0A) are more resistant to oxidative stress than those of R20291 (R20291 spo0A) and 5325 (5325 spo0A). In addition, 5325 spo0A vegetative cells exhibited greater resistance to organic solvents. In contrast, 630Δerm spores were more sensitive than R20291 or 5325 spores to butanol. Spores from all three strains exhibited high levels of resistance to ethanol, hydrogen peroxide, chloroform and heat, although R20291 spores were more resistant to temperatures in the range of 60-75°C. Finally, household bleach served as the only chemical reagent tested that consistently reduced C. difficile vegetative cells and spores of all tested strains. These findings establish conditions that result in vegetative cell and spore elimination and illustrate the resistance of C. difficile to common decontamination methods. These results further demonstrate that the vegetative cells and spores of various C. difficile strains have different resistance properties that may impact decontamination of surfaces and hands.
RESUMO
Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic, Gram-positive pathogen that causes severe gastrointestinal disease in humans and other mammals. C. difficile is notoriously difficult to work with and, until recently, few tools were available for genetic manipulation and molecular analyses. Despite the recent advances in the field, there is no simple or cost-effective technique for measuring gene transcription in C. difficile other than direct transcriptional analyses (e.g., quantitative real-time PCR and RNA-seq), which are time-consuming, expensive and difficult to scale-up. We describe the development of an in vivo reporter assay that can provide qualitative and quantitative measurements of C. difficile gene expression. Using the Enterococcus faecalis alkaline phosphatase gene, phoZ, we measured expression of C. difficile genes using a colorimetric alkaline phosphatase assay. We show that inducible alkaline phosphatase activity correlates directly with native gene expression. The ability to analyze gene expression using a standard reporter is an important and critically needed tool to study gene regulation and design genetic screens for C. difficile and other anaerobic clostridia.
