Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-9-2013
Abstract
Diarrheal diseases are the second-most common cause of death among children under the age of five worldwide. Cholera alone, caused by the marine bacterium Vibrio cholerae, is responsible for several million cases and over 120,000 deaths annually. When contaminated water is ingested, V. cholerae passes through the gastric acid barrier, penetrates the mucin layer of the small intestine, and adheres to the underlying epithelial lining. V. cholerae multiplies rapidly, secretes cholera toxin, and exits the human host in vast numbers during diarrheal purges. How V. cholerae rapidly reaches such high numbers during each purge is not clearly understood. We propose that V. cholerae employs its bactericidal type VI secretion system to engage in intraspecies and intraguild predation for nutrient acquisition to support rapid growth and multiplication. © 2013 Pukatzki and Provenzano.
Recommended Citation
Pukatzki, Stefan, and Daniele Provenzano. "Vibrio cholerae as a predator: lessons from evolutionary principles." Frontiers in Microbiology 4 (2013): 384. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2013.00384
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Frontiers in Microbiology
DOI
10.3389/fmicb.2013.00384
Comments
© 2013 Pukatzki and Provenzano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.