Originally published as JHC exPRESS on March 17, 2008. doi:10.1369/jhc.2008.950923
Volume 56 (6): 597-604, 2008 Copyright ©The Histochemical Society, Inc. Characteristics of the Phagocytic Cup Induced by Uropathogenic Escherichia coli
Department of Biochemistry (HW,X-PK) and Department of Dermatology (F-XL), New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York Correspondence to: Xiang-Peng Kong, PhD, Department of Biochemistry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016. E-mail: kong{at}saturn.med.nyu.edu
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli invade the urothelial umbrella cells by using the zipper mechanism. However, the details of the early events of this invasion, such as the formation of the phagocytic cup, are not yet well understood. We show here, using thin section electron microscopy and immunogold labeling, that the plasma membrane curves around the bacterial surface in the phagocytic cup. There exists a uniform gap between the bacterium and the urothelial membrane, and actin filaments are present in the phagocytic cup. We suggest that the action–reaction between the mechanical forces generated by pilus retraction of the bacterium and the actin polymerization in the urothelial cell plays a role in maintaining the phagocytic cup. This manuscript contains online supplemental material at http://www.jhc.org. Please visit this article online to view these materials. (J Histochem Cytochem 56:597–604, 2008)
Key Words: urinary tract infection uropathogenic bacteria urinary bladder urothelium bacteria invasion phagocytosis actin filaments immunogold labeling electron microscopy
URINARY TRACT INFECTION (UTI) is one of the most common infectious diseases; it causes >8 million clinic office visits annually, with a total health cost of >3 billion dollars for Americans annually (Litwin et al. 2005 90% by rigid, scallop-shaped urothelial plaques. Our recent measurements estimate the average size of these plaques, also called the asymmetric unit membrane (AUM), to be 600 nm in diameter (Kreplak et al. 2007
The details of the invasion process of UPEC, especially of the early stages, however, are far from well understood (Pizarro-Cerda and Cossart 2006 We describe an EM study of the phagocytic cup induced by UPEC in the mouse model. We show that the attachment of UPEC can overcome the rigidity of the urothelial plaques to form a smooth phagocytic cup that curves around the bacteria but maintains a uniform distance from the bacterial body. In addition, actin filaments are indeed present in these cups, likely recruited to the cup by the mechanical stress induced by the UPEC attachment.
Bacterial Strains and Antibodies UPEC strain J96 was purchased from ATCC (Rockville, MD; catalog number 700336) and grown at 37C in Luria-Bertani broth shaking at 270 rpm overnight, followed by another 48 hr of static growth to induce the growth of the type 1 pili. The expression of type 1 pili was verified by mannose-sensitive agglutination using 1% baker's yeast in PBS. The bacteria were harvested by centrifugation at 1200 x g for 20 min at room temperature and resuspended in PBS for inoculation.
The primary antibodies used for antigen detection included mouse monoclonal anti-UPIII antibody AU1 (Liang et al. 2001
Inoculation of Bacteria
Transmission EM For immunogold labeling, thin sections of 50–70 nm on formvar-coated nickel EM grids were first floated on a drop of PBS (pH 7.4) containing 1% BSA, 0.05% Triton X-100, and 0.05% Tween 20 for 5 min; the grids were then transferred to a drop of a dilution buffer (PBS with 1% BSA and 0.05% Tween 20) that contained primary antibodies and were incubated for 3 hr. Afterward, the grids were washed with PBS and transferred to a drop of gold particle–conjugated secondary antibodies in the dilution buffer for 1 hr. The working dilution ratios of the antibodies were 1:1 for AU1, 1:25 for anti-actin antibody, 1:300 for anti-E. coli antibody, and 1:30 for the secondary antibodies. Grids were stained with uranyl acetate and lead citrate, air-dried, and imaged using a Philips CM12 electron microscope (FEI; Eindhoven, The Netherlands). A total of 300 micrographs were taken, and only selected images are presented here. For routine EM, mouse bladders and bacteria pellets were fixed at room temperature for 2 hr with 2.5% glutaraldehyde in 0.1 M sodium cacodylate buffer (pH 7.4) and postfixed with 1% aqueous osmium tetroxide for 2 hr. After dehydration sequentially in graded ethanol, the samples were embedded in Eponate 12 (Ted Pella; Redding, CA).
Morphologies of UPEC-induced Phagocytic Cups We carried out experimental UTIs using the well-established mouse model of UPEC invasion (McTaggart et al. 1990
Many micrographs of the phagocytic cups from thin-section EM were collected, and Figure 2 shows several typical images. The first striking feature of these phagocytic cups was that the apical plasma membrane of the umbrella cell lost the scallop-shaped form of the individual urothelial plaques. Instead, the plasma membrane now followed the shape of the attached bacteria, curving around the bacteria. Immunogold labeling using AU1 antibody showed that the apical membrane of the urothelial cell under the bacteria was still composed of uroplakins (Figures 2A and 2C). In addition, each bacterium had its own phagocytic cup even when there was a cluster of bacteria localized at the same surface area (Figures 2B and 3B ).
The second striking feature of the UPEC-induced phagocytic cups was that there was always an almost uniform gap between the urothelial cell plasma membrane and the bacterial outer membrane (Figures 2 and 3). The width of this gap, estimated from the analysis of >200 phagocytic cups, is 50–150 nm. Re-examination of the thin-section images in early literature on experimental UTI showed this gap to be a common feature of the urothelial phagocytic cup (Fukushi et al. 1979
Actin Filaments in the Phagocytic Cups
Unlike the regular apical urothelial surface, we found that actin filaments were present in all the phagocytic cups induced by J96 (Figure 3). These filaments were all localized to the regions in the phagocytic cups with dark contrast in the EM images, presumably densely packed with actin filaments. We therefore can conclude that the actin filaments are indeed involved in the urothelial cytoskeleton rearrangement occurring on the attachment of the UPEC. In cultured cell systems, it was found that phosphoinositide 3 kinase, focal adhesin kinase, -actinin, and vinculin are involved in the signaling pathway of the UPEC invasion (Martinez et al. 2000
We present here a careful examination of UPEC-induced phagocytic cups in the mouse UTI model by thin-section EM. Our data showed several striking features of these cups. One of these features is that the apical plasma membrane of the umbrella cell in the phagocytic cup lost the scallop-shaped form of the individual urothelial plaques, and the urothelial plasma membrane instead followed the shape of the attached bacterium (Figures 2 and 3). This suggests that there likely exists a mechanical force that can overcome the rigidity of the urothelial plaques during the formation of the phagocytic cups (see discussion below). Interestingly, each bacterium was found to have its own phagocytic cup (Figures 2 and 3). The corollary of this is that each bacterium will be internalized into a membrane-enclosed vacuole of its own. We did not find flask-shaped caveolae in any of the phagocytic cups, contrary to that in the case of the UPEC invasion model using cultured cells (Duncan et al. 2004
Although the gap between the bacteria and urothelial apical cell membrane is electron lucent (Figures 2 and 3), it is likely maintained by the bacterial pili (not visible under the current method of sample preparation; Figure 1D). Because the type 1–piliated bacteria harbor pili of uneven lengths up to 2000 nm in culture (Supplementary Figure SF1), one can assume that they also have pili in different lengths before attaching to the urothelial membrane. These pili are quite rigid; they have to adjust their lengths during the formation of the phagocytic cups to maintain a relatively uniform gap between the bacteria and the host cell membrane. Interestingly, a gap is also observed between the bacteria and the urothelial cellular content after the bacterial internalization (Bishop et al. 2007
The presence of actin filaments in both tight junctions and the UPEC-induced phagocytic cups (Figures 3 and 4) suggests some similarities between junctional formation and phagocytosis (Cossart et al. 2003
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant DK52206. We thank Drs. Wenbiao Gan, Hongying Huang, Lan Mo, Richard P. Novick, Liyu Tu, Huitang Zhang, and Weiyue Zheng for useful discussions, Dr. Heinz Schwarz for suggestion of antibody C4 for immunogold labeling of actin filaments, and Valicia Burke for critically reading the manuscript.
Received for publication January 18, 2008; accepted March 7, 2008
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