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Salmonella Typhimurium is the etiological agent of gastroenteritis in humans and enteric fever in mice. Inside these hosts, Salmonella must overcome hostile conditions to develop a successful infection, a process in which the levels of porins may be critical. Herein, the role of the Salmonella Typhimurium porin OmpD in the infection process was assessed for adherence, invasion and proliferation in RAW264.7 mouse macrophages and in BALB/c mice. In cultured macrophages, a ΔompD strain exhibited increased invasion and proliferation phenotypes as compared to its parental strain. In contrast, overexpression of ompD caused a reduction in bacterial proliferation but did not affect adherence or invasion. In the murine model, the ΔompD strain showed increased ability to survive and replicate in target organs of infection. The ompD transcript levels showed a down-regulation when Salmonella resided within cultured macrophages and when it colonized target organs in infected mice. Additionally, cultured macrophages infected with the ΔompD strain produced lower levels of reactive oxygen species, suggesting that down-regulation of ompD could favor replication of Salmonella inside macrophages and the subsequent systemic dissemination, by limiting the reactive oxygen species response of the host.

Two-component systems are one of the most prevalent mechanisms by which bacteria sense, respond and adapt to changes in their environment. The activation of a sensor histidine kinase leads to autophosphorylation of a conserved histidine residue followed by transfer of the phosphoryl group to a cognate response regulator in an aspartate residue. The search for antibiotics that inhibit molecular targets has led to study prokaryotic two-component systems. In this study, we characterized in vitro and in vivo the BaeSR two-component system from Salmonella Typhimurium and evaluated its role in mdtA regulation in response to ciprofloxacin treatment. We demonstrated in vitro that residue histidine 250 is essential for BaeS autophosphorylation and aspartic acid 61 for BaeR transphosphorylation. By real-time PCR, we showed that mdtA activation in the presence of ciprofloxacin depends on both members of this system and that histidine 250 of BaeS and aspartic acid 61 of BaeR are needed for this. Moreover, the mdtA expression is directly regulated by binding of BaeR at the promoter region, and this interaction is enhanced when the protein is phosphorylated. In agreement, a BaeR mutant unable to phosphorylate at aspartic acid 61 presents a lower affinity with the mdtA promoter.