How human commensal withstand attacks from V. cholerae

The Blokesch lab has published a new study on V. cholerae's T6SS. While this device allows the pathogen to kill many Gram-negative bacteria including laboratory-domesticated and commensal E. coli, it seems inefficient for the elimination of several human gut commensal species. Precisely, the T6SS-resistant microbiota isolates belong to the Enterobacter cloacae complex and the Klebsiella genus and defend themselves with a superior T6SS or capsules, respectively.

Congrats to all authors, especially to Nicolas Flaugnatti (established genetic engineering of the commensals and generated all genetic constructs; performed and supervised most wet-lab experiments) and Sandrine Isaac (performed the basic bioinformatic analyses of the study; thanks to her husband Marc for the re-assembly of the Pacbio reads). And thanks to Leonardo Rocha who delayed his own thesis project to help with experiments for this study during the restrictions due to the covid-19 pandemic; Nina Vesel for bringing in the Acinetobacter baumannii angle; and the technical assistance by Sandrine Stutzmann & former member Candice Stoudmann.

A special thanks to Olaya Rendueles, Amadine Buffet & Eduardo Rocha at the Institute Pasteur for this great collaboration.

Lastly, we also acknowledge Trevor Lawley and his team for provision of the human gut isolates and the genomic facility of the UNIL for the PacBio sequencing.

This work was initially conceived in 2015/2016 during Melanie's proposal writing for an ERC CoG (funded in 2016).

Press coverage can be found here or here.