Ricerc@Sapienza

Backgrounds
In several bacterial pathogens, efflux pumps, besides exporting antimicrobial agents, play a role in
bacterial pathogenicity.
Shigella, the causative agent of bacillary dysentery, has conserved 14 out of 20 operons encoding
efflux pumps systems present in the genome of its commensal ancestor Escherichia coli.
Objectives
The aim of this work was (i) to analyze the regulation of Shigella's efflux pumps during the infection of
macrophages and epithelial cells and (ii) to identify and characterize those that are required for

In several bacterial pathogens, efflux pumps, besides exporting antimicrobial agents, play a
role in bacterial pathogenicity.
Shigella, the causative agent of bacillary dysentery, during its evolution towards pathogenicity,
has conserved 14, out of 20 present in the genome of its commensal ancestor Escherichia coli,
operons encoding efflux pumps systems.
The aim of this work is to analyze the induction of efflux pumps conserved in Shigella
during the infection of macrophages and epithelial cells and to identify those that are potentially