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Review
. 2017 Jun 8;13(6):e1006325.
doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006325. eCollection 2017 Jun.

T6SS: The bacterial "fight club" in the host gut

Affiliations
Review

T6SS: The bacterial "fight club" in the host gut

Thibault G Sana et al. PLoS Pathog. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The T6SS-mediated bacterial warfare in the host gut.
(A) Commensal Bacteriodes fragilis bacteria (in blue) target and kill enterotoxigenic B. fragilis (in yellow) in a T6SS-dependent manner (shown as crossbows), providing colonization resistance to the host. (B) Salmonella Typhimurium (in yellow) uses its T6SS crossbow to kill Klebsiella oxytoca (in blue), a potential nutritional competitor, allowing Salmonella to expand in the host gut. Dead bacteria are represented in grey, the gut epithelium is represented in light blue, and green cubes represent similar sugars metabolized by Salmonella and Klebsiella.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Engineering probiotic bacteria to fight enteric pathogens?
Commensal bacteria (in blue) could be genetically engineered (depicted with a syringe) to be resistant to a pathogen’s T6SS attack by providing them with genes encoding an antitoxin (depicted as a light blue shield) or by providing them with their own T6SS (shown as a light blue crossbow) that specifically targets the pathogen (in yellow).

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