Honors Program
Midway Honors
Date of Award
5-2014
Thesis Professor(s)
Robert V. Schoborg
Thesis Professor Department
Microbiology
Thesis Reader(s)
Laraine Powers, William N. Duncan
Abstract
The Chlamydiaceae are a bacterial family that contains a single genus: Chlamydia. The genus Chlamydia consists of 9 species that are obligate, intracellular pathogens. Untreated C. trachomatis infections can lead to serious health ramifications, such as ectopic pregnancy, tubal factor infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease, and long-term pelvic pain. In this study, it was found that a primary antibody dilution of 1:400 using methanol fixed HeLA cells, as derived from Carrasco, et al. protocol, was only optimal for PMP-C staining. Pmp-A, Pmp-B, and Pmp-F were found to stain brighter with formaldehyde fixed, infected HeLa cells and using different primary antibody dilutions. The manuscript by Carrasco, et al., demonstrated that chlamydial persistence caused by penicillin-stressed conditions showed a decrease in Pmp-B and Pmp-C protein expression between 24-48 hpi, while Pmp-A and Pmp-F expression stayed the same under the stressful conditions. We hypothesized that under HSV- induced persistence the same results would occur. However, our data indicates that the chlamydial response to stressful conditions is not the same among persistence-inducers and implies that various inducers of persistence may affect PMP expression differently. Initially, we also hypothesized that PMP expression could be utilized as an indicator to determine whether an infected individual has a productive or persistent chlamydial infection. Due to the experiments’ results, PMP expression is most likely not a good marker to identify the type of chlamydial infection (ie. productive or persistent) in the host.
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Withheld
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Colgrove, Julia S., "Polymorphic membrane protein expression in Chlamydia/HSV co-infected cells" (2014). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 241. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/241
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.