Publications by authors named "Sandra Y Wotzka"

The microbiota confers colonization resistance, which blocks Salmonella gut colonization. As diet affects microbiota composition, we studied whether food composition shifts enhance susceptibility to infection. Shifting mice to diets with reduced fibre or elevated fat content for 24 h boosted Salmonella Typhimurium or Escherichia coli gut colonization and plasmid transfer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: Lactulose is a common food ingredient and widely used as a treatment for constipation or hepatic encephalopathy and a substrate for hydrogen breath tests. Lactulose is fermented by the colon microbiota resulting in the production of hydrogen (H2). H2 is a substrate for enteropathogens including Salmonella Typhimurium (S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Despite decades of research, efficient therapies for most enteropathogenic bacteria are still lacking. In this review, we focus on Salmonella enterica Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium), a frequent cause of acute, self-limiting food-borne diarrhea and a model that has revealed key principles of enteropathogen infection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Vaccine-induced high-avidity IgA protects against bacterial infections by neutralizing toxins or blocking bacterial interactions with gut tissues through a process called 'immune exclusion.'
  • IgA facilitates the formation of bacterial clumps by connecting daughter cells after division, which helps in clearing pathogens from the gut, even at low bacterial densities typically found during infections.
  • This mechanism not only accelerates pathogen clearance but also hinders the spread of antibiotic resistance by preventing the transfer of plasmids between bacteria, highlighting the potential of oral vaccines in this fight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Salmonella Typhimurium (S.Tm) causes acute enteropathy resolving after 4-7 days. Strikingly, antibiotic therapy does not accelerate disease resolution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Our mucosal surfaces are the main sites of non-vector-borne pathogen entry, as well as the main interface with our commensal microbiota. We are still only beginning to understand how mucosal adaptive immunity interacts with commensal and pathogenic microbes to influence factors such as infectivity, phenotypic diversity, and within-host evolution. This is in part due to difficulties in generating specific mucosal adaptive immune responses without disrupting the mucosal microbial ecosystem itself.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In vivo, antibiotics are often much less efficient than ex vivo and relapses can occur. The reasons for poor in vivo activity are still not completely understood. We have studied the fluoroquinolone antibiotic ciprofloxacin in an animal model for complicated Salmonellosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Many plants produce latex, a specialized, metabolically active cytoplasm. This is generally regarded as a defensive trait but latex may also possess additional functions. We investigated the role of latex in the dandelion species Taraxacum brevicorniculatum that contains considerable amounts of high-quality natural rubber by carrying out a comprehensive analysis of the latex proteome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF