Abstract
Brucella abortus has been shown to colonize many different cell types and tissues in the host. At sites such as spleen and lymph nodes, the bacterium persists intracellularly, eliciting only a mild granulomatous inflammatory response. In contrast, in the placenta B. abortus elicits a massive inflammatory response, and many of the bacteria are found to be growing in the extracellular space. This presentation will discuss our lab’s modeling of B. abortus infection in mice and our approaches to understand the metabolic interactions between B. abortus and its replication niches within different types of macrophages and in the placenta. Ultimately, we aim to better understand how the pathogen exploits each environment to replicate and spread to the next host.
