NARILIS researchers decipher Brucella stress response during human infection

Brucella species are bacterial pathogens known for being responsible of brucellosis, a worldwide zoonosis generating major economic losses and public health issues. These bacteria cause abortion and sterility in domestic animals like sheep, goats and cows. Human infections most commonly happen through the ingestion of contaminated animal products or by direct exposure to infected animals. In humans, the disease causes flu-like symptoms, including fever, joint pain and fatigue.

Prof. Xavier De Bolle (UNamur, Research Unit in Biology of Microorganisms) is leading a research group dedicated to study the molecular mechanisms that drive the capacity of Brucella to adapt, survive and proliferate inside host organisms. The team has recently made significant discoveries about Brucella stress response during host infection, in particular its response to alkylating stress, a DNA damaging stress. They showed, for the first time, that the intracellular pathogen Brucella abortus has indeed to cope with DNA alkylating agents produced inside host immune cells. This was the main PhD thesis topic of Katy Poncin (FRIA fellowship 2014-2018). Moreover, their study also highlights key actors for DNA repair required by B. abortus to face this alkylating stress, in vitro and in a mouse infection model. These important findings have just been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications (Poncin et al., 2019).
Along with these new data, the team has also developed innovative tools allowing to monitor B. abortus cell cycle at the single cell level. These tools were set up with the support of the bio-organic chemistry lab of Prof. Stéphane Vincent.

From left to right: Agnès Roba (PhD student at URBM), Kévin Willemart (lab technician at URVI) and Georges Potemberg (PhD student at URBM)