Hi! My name is Salmonella enterica. I am a rod shaped, flagellated, Gram negative member of the enterobacteriaceae Family. My Genus is Salmonella. I am a facultative anaerobic organism. I produce ATP through the mixed-acid fermentation of glucose. This process produces CO2 and H2 with multiple acid end-products, such as formate, acetateand lactate. I normally like to hang out in the intestines of both humans and animals. My main method of transportation is through chicken eggs and tissue as well as the tissue of pigs, cattle and dairy products. Sometimes I even like to take a special trip and tag along with rodents or insects. I am very pathogenic causing about 1.3 million infections annually and am responsible for approximately 30% of food borne illness. My subspecies is responsible for Typhoid fever which is a worldwide bacterial disease. I was famous at one point for the aforementioned disease but since the rise of 20th century sanitation techniques and antibiotics the occurrence of Typhoid has dropped drastically. Iām a very clever pathogen! I invade host cells by secreting proteins and injecting them into the cell, my proteins compromise the integrity of it by destroying the cytoskeleton. This causes membrane ruffling which allows me to enter the cell through the plasma membrane. Recently researchers have been using me to treat cancer in some mouse models. They use me to infect the cancer cells to be able to target them with an immune response.
Refrences:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20659291
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/65/9/3920.full.pdf+html
Textbookofbacteriology.net.
Hogg, S. (2005). Essential Microbiology (1st ed.). Wiley. pp. 99ā100
