Antibiotic resistance and patogenicity in Escherichia coli

Escherichia Coli is a Gram negative bacterium, widely studied because it represents an integrating part of the human enteric flora, even if various strains are pathogen. Moreover such strains are zoonotic agents and they can be isolate also in ruminants in which cause diarrhoea and edema. Human infection occurs via fecal-oral pathway and animals are reservoirs for this human pathogen. Lesions are characterized by intimate bacterial attachment to the host cell membrane and the destruction of microvilli at the site of bacterial adherence, caused by the accumulation of signal proteins leading to the rearrangement of cytoskeletal proteins, in particular, filamentous actin, resulting in pedestal formation at the apical cell membrane. In recent data, the evaluation of membrane proteins, phosphoproteome and the study of oxidative stress, can contribute to understanding the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance to molecular level and to define new strategies for the design of highly selective therapeutic agents. Evaluation of protein profiles respect to various mechanisms of stress, i.e. the resistance to antibiotics or the modification related to the antibiotic resistance, represents a valid and integrating approach for the study of new therapeutic strategies. In the current study, comparative proteomics was applied to identify changes in proteins responsible for antibiotic resistance in different in vivo isolates Escherichia coli. In particular it has been studied strains with same virulence factors, but an antibiotic profile completely different, isolates from different organs of the same animal.