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Greater use of targeted mutant strains would clarify host reponses

Posted by iglomski on 20 Aug 2008 at 11:41 GMT

It is unclear why the authors compared the relative effects of the Sterne strain versus a delta -pX01 strain on the expression profile of hBMEC. The pX01 plasmid contains many more genes than just the toxins (such as BslA, as noted in the text) which could very well have effects on hBMEC gene expression. It would seem that using their strains with targeted elimination of LF and/or EF, rather than using the blunt tool of completely eliminating the pX01 plasmid, would have been much more informative in the microarray analysis. Instead, the only gene whose expression was analyzed with the targeted bacterial mutants was IL-8. Does this analysis of only IL-8 bias the conclusions, since presumably; many other genes will be affected by LF/EF…maybe even anti-inflammatory genes?