Congratulations to Laura, Saima, Theresa, Jee-Hwan, Mark, In Young , and Morgan for their work published in AEM! This paper characterized our lab’s creation of the LR6475 Nonuple strain, a mutant with nine genes encoding adhesins inactivated that has reduced capacity to adhere to enteroid monolayers.
Figure: Conceptual overview of a strain with reduced colonization potential. (a) The locations of 10 putative adhesion proteins in the L. reuteri VPL1014 genome are indicated. (b) In this study, we mutated each putative adhesion mutant individually and sequentially to yield a nonuple mutant. Depicted here are graphical examples of single mutants and the nonuple mutant. (c) We hypothesize that the nonuple mutant, lacking multiple adhesion proteins, will have reduced adherence to human intestinal cells. In this graphic, wild-type L. reuteri can adhere to mucus or epithelial cells, while the nonuple mutant is unable to adhere.