Sarah E. F. D'Orazio
University of Kentucky, KY·Microbiology & Immunology
Eating food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can grow inside host cells, can lead to brain infection. One form, meningitis, mostly affects people with weakened immune systems, whose bodies cannot stop the bacteria from multiplying in the spleen and liver and flooding the bloodstream.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Neuroscience
Biology
- Topics
Listeria monocytogenes
listeriosis
rhombencephalitis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Determine whether the route neurotropic Listeria monocytogenes use to cross the gut lining, or the inflammation they provoke, concentrates them in nerve bundles of the intestinal submucosa or in vagal nerve endings near gut lymphoid cryptopatches.
- Identify the novel Listeria surface protein that drives enhanced invasion of enteric glial cells, the cells that sheath nerves in the intestine.
- Test whether the truncated actA allele carried by neurotropic strains UKVDL9 and SD4000 produces an altered form of intracellular movement that lets bacteria travel the length of an axon to the brainstem.
- Characterize how lineage III clinical isolates establish brainstem infection in mice without reaching high bacterial titers in the blood, as a small-animal model of rhombencephalitis.
More about the research
A second form, rhombencephalitis, is a delayed infection of the brainstem that strikes young, otherwise healthy people. Because healthy immune systems do not prevent it, the bacteria themselves likely carry traits that steer them toward nerve tissue, and those traits are largely unknown.
Why it matters
Listeria infection from contaminated food is life-threatening, and the brainstem form affects previously healthy young people with no clear risk factors. Identifying the bacterial surface protein and motility gene variant that let Listeria enter gut nerves and travel to the brain could point to targets for blocking this spread and inform food-safety assessment of which strains are dangerous. The work also opens a broader question of how bacteria interact with the nervous system of the gut.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Timothy Casselli
University of South Alabama, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier, the cell layer separating blood from the fluid around the brain, is where Borrelia burgdorferi and immune cells enter the central nervous system in infected mice.
Anne-Marie Krachler
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether host fecal proteins bound to the EHEC surface, including serpins such as alpha-1 antitrypsin and serpinE2, raise infectivity, by adding individual and combined proteins in controlled exposure and challenge experiments in zebrafish larvae.
Leigh Knodler
University of Vermont, VT·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether nine genes in the 40-kilobase type III secretion gene cluster on the Providencia alcalifaciens plasmid drive invasion of host cells, combining computational prediction, in vitro biochemistry and infection of cultured non-phagocytic cells.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
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