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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.02646-07
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Cell Invasion and Matricide during Photorhabdus luminescens Transmission by Heterorhabditis bacteriophora Nematodes

Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824; The Center for C. elegans Anatomy, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10462

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: ciche{at}msu.edu.

	Abstract

Many animals and plants are symbiotic with beneficial bacteria. Experimentally tractable models are necessary to understand the processes involved in the selective transmission of symbiotic bacteria. One such model is the transmission of insect pathogenic bacterial symbionts, Photorhabdus spp., by Heterorhabditis bacteriophora infective juvenile (IJ) stage nematodes. By observing egg-laying behavior and IJ development, it was determined that IJs develop exclusively via intra-uterine hatching and matricide (i.e., endotokia matricida). By transiently exposing nematodes to fluorescently-labeled symbionts, it was determined that symbionts infect the maternal intestine as a biofilm, then invade and breach the rectal gland epithelium becoming available to the IJ offspring developing in the pseudocoelom. Cell- and stage-specific infection occurs again in the pre-IJ pharyngeal intestinal valve cells (PIVCs), helping symbionts to persist as IJs develop and move to a new host. Synchronous with nematode development are changes in symbiont and host behavior (e.g., adherence vs. invasion). Thus, Photorhabdus symbionts are maternally transmitted by an elaborate and infectious process involving multiple selective steps to achieve symbiont-specific transmission.