10.6084/m9.figshare.1449295.v2 Jess Millar Jess Millar Rahul Raghavan Rahul Raghavan Coxiella burnetii and Leishmania mexicana residing within similar parasitophorous vacuoles elicit discordant host responses. figshare 2015 coxiella Leishmania asm Microbiology Computational Biology Bioinformatics Infectious Diseases Evolutionary Biology 2015-06-15 22:53:59 Poster https://figshare.com/articles/poster/Millar_JA_Vald_s_R_Cambronne_ED_Landfear_SM_Raghavan_R_Coxiella_burnetii_and_Leishmania_mexicana_residing_within_similar_parasitophorous_vacuoles_elicit_discordant_host_responses_115th_General_Meeting_of_the_American_Society_for_Microbiology_New_Orleans_L/1449295 <p><em>Coxiella burnetii</em> is the only bacterium known to thrive in an acidic intracellular vacuole derived from lysozomes. <em>Leishmania mexicana</em>, a eukaryote, has also independently evolved to live in a morphologically similar vacuole. As <em>Coxiella</em> and <em>Leishmania</em> are distantly related, we hypothesized that their respective infections will elicit disparate host responses while producing similar parasite-containing vacuoles, thereby revealing the host processes targeted by each pathogen. We studied this parallel evolution of host cell regulation by comparing gene expression in human cells infected with <em>C. burnetii</em> or <em>L. mexicana</em>. At 5 d post-infection, negative regulation of cell death was observed in <em>C. burnetii</em> infected cells--probably to prolong host cell life cycle to enhance bacterial replication; conversely, positive regulation of cell death was upregulated in <em>L. mexicana</em> infection--probably to promote pathogen cell-to-cell spread. In concert with these observations, <em>C. burnetii</em> and <em>L. mexicana</em> also altered the expression of host microRNAs that modulate apoptosis. Intriguingly, several host genes displayed differential expression of mRNA isoforms, suggestive of diverse functions for the encoded proteins. By comparing host responses to <em>Coxiella</em> and <em>Leishmania</em> infections, we are beginning to understand the evolutionary processes that enabled a bacterium and a eukaryote to occupy the same extreme environment.</p>