rickettsia conorii transcriptional response within inoculation eschar立克次氏体conorii转录响应在接种焦痂.pdfVIP

Rickettsia conorii Transcriptional Response within Inoculation Eschar 1 1 2 1 2 1 Patricia Renesto *, Clarisse Rovery , Jacques Schrenzel , Quentin Leroy , Antoine Huyghe , Wenjun Li , 1 2 1 Hubert Lepidi , Patrice Franc¸ois , Didier Raoult ´ ´ ´ 1 Unite des Rickettsies, IRD-CNRS UMR 6236, Faculte de Medecine, Marseille, France, 2 Service of Infectious Diseases/Genomic Research Laboratory, University of Geneva Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland Abstract Background: Rickettsia conorii, the causative agent of the Mediterranean spotted fever, is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected ticks Rhipicephalus sanguineus. The skin thus constitutes an important barrier for the entry and propagation of R. conorii. Given this, analysis of the survival strategies used by the bacterium within infected skin is critical for our understanding of rickettsiosis. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we report the first genome-wide analysis of R. conorii gene expression from infected human skin biopsies. Our data showed that R. conorii exhibited a striking transcript signature that is remarkably conserved across patients, regardless of genotype. The expression profiles obtained using custom Agilent microarrays were validated by quantitative RT-PCR. Within eschars, the amount of detected R. conorii transcripts was of 55%, this value being of 74% for bacteria grown in Vero cells. In such infected host tissues, approximately 15% (n = 211) of the total predicted R. conorii ORFs appeared differentially expressed compared to bacteria grown in standard laboratory condi