Environmental desiccation stress induces viable but non culturable state in Neisseria meningitidis

IF 2.3 3区生物学 Q3 MICROBIOLOGY

Archives of Microbiology Pub Date : 2025-01-29 DOI:10.1007/s00203-025-04249-8

Poonam Kanojiya, Tiyasa Haldar, Sunil D. Saroj

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Abstract

Environmental factors play a crucial role in bacterial virulence. During transmission, in a non-host environment bacteria are exposed to various environmental stress which could alter bacterial physiology and virulence. N. meningitidis is transmitted from person to person through direct contact. However, the role of environmental desiccation in the virulence of bacterial pathogens is not clearly understood. Therefore, the effect of environmental desiccation on survival, transmission, and virulence needs further investigation. We demonstrate that N. meningitidis was sensitive to desiccation stress. The viable counts reduced significantly (p < 0.05) after desiccation. It was found that desiccation induces a viable but non-culturable state (VBNC) in N. meningitidis. We considered cells to be in VBNC when no viable counts were obtained on growth media and live cells were detected after live-dead staining. After resuscitation, N. meningitidis retained virulence characteristics which indicate that it can transit between the host in VBNC state. Furthermore, the relative expression of capsule increased significantly after 12 and 24 h of desiccation. The observations indicate that the environmental desiccation might induce capsule biosynthesis in N. meningitidis, leading to enhanced virulence and survival in macrophages.

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来源期刊

Archives of Microbiology 生物-微生物学

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

3.60%

发文量

601

审稿时长

3 months

期刊介绍： Research papers must make a significant and original contribution to microbiology and be of interest to a broad readership. The results of any experimental approach that meets these objectives are welcome, particularly biochemical, molecular genetic, physiological, and/or physical investigations into microbial cells and their interactions with their environments, including their eukaryotic hosts. Mini-reviews in areas of special topical interest and papers on medical microbiology, ecology and systematics, including description of novel taxa, are also published. Theoretical papers and those that report on the analysis or ''mining'' of data are acceptable in principle if new information, interpretations, or hypotheses emerge.