Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems

Mohamed Shaheen; Nicholas J Ashbolt

doi:10.3390/microorganisms9010174

Back

Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems

Mohamed Shaheen and Nicholas J Ashbolt

Microorganisms, Vol.9(1), p.174

15/01/2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9010174

PMID: 33467483

Files and links (2)

pdf

Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems3.91 MBDownload View

Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open Access

url

Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water SystemsView

Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open

Metrics

1 File views/ downloads

22 Record Views

7 Times Cited - Web of Science

See more details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

Source: InCites

Abstract

Legionnaires’ disease

free-living amoebae

Legionella

engineered water systems

Intracellular growth of pathogenic in free-living amoebae (FLA) results in the critical concentrations that are problematic in engineered water systems (EWS). However, being amoeba-resistant bacteria (ARB), how spp. becomes internalized within FLA is still poorly understood. Using fluorescent microscopy, we investigated in real-time the preferential feeding behavior of three water-related FLA species, , and regarding and two strains. Although all the studied FLA species supported intracellular growth of , they avoided this bacterium to a certain degree in the presence of and mostly fed on it when the preferred bacterial food-sources were limited. Moreover, once were intracellular, it inhibited digestion of co-occurring within the same trophozoites. Altogether, based on FLA-bacteria interactions and the shifts in microbial population dynamics, we propose that FLA's feeding preference leads to an initial growth of FLA and depletion of prey bacteria, thus increases the relative abundance of and creates a "forced-feeding" condition facilitating the internalization of into FLA to initiate the cycles of intracellular multiplication. These findings imply that monitoring of FLA levels in EWS could be useful in predicting possible imminent high occurrence of .

Details

Title: Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems
Creators: Mohamed Shaheen - School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1C9, Canada
Nicholas J Ashbolt - School of Environment, Science & Engineering, Southern Cross University, Lismore Campus, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia
Publication Details: Microorganisms, Vol.9(1), p.174
Publisher: MDPI AG; Switzerland
Grant note: JEFL Grant 34575 and GPIN-2017-04004 / The Canadian Fund for Innovation and Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant
Identifiers: 991012922099102368
Copyright: Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Academic Unit: Faculty of Science and Engineering; Science
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

Differential Bacterial Predation by Free-Living Amoebae May Result in Blooms of Legionella in Drinking Water Systems

Files and links (2)

Metrics

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Abstract

Details

Southern Cross University Social media