Involvement of lipid microdomains in human endothelial cells infected by Streptococcus agalactiae type III belonging to the hypervirulent ST-17

BACKGROUND Streptococcus agalactiae capsular type III strains are a leading cause of invasive neonatal infections. Many pathogens have developed mechanisms to escape from host defense response using the host membrane microdomain machinery. Lipid rafts play an important role in a variety of cellular functions and the benefit provided by interaction with lipid rafts can vary from one pathogen to another. OBJECTIVES This study aims to evaluate the involvement of membrane microdomains during infection of human endothelial cell by S. agalactiae. METHODS The effects of cholesterol depletion and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway activation during S. agalactiae-human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) interaction were analysed by pre-treatment with methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD) or LY294002 inhibitors, immunofluorescence and immunoblot analysis. The involvement of lipid rafts was analysed by colocalisation of bacteria with flotillin-1 and caveolin-1 using fluorescence confocal microscopy. FINDINGS In this work, we demonstrated the importance of the integrity of lipid rafts microdomains and activation of PI3K/Akt pathway during invasion of S. agalactiae strain to HUVEC cells. Our results suggest the involvement of flotillin-1 and caveolin-1 during the invasion of S. agalactiae strain in HUVEC cells. CONCLUSIONS The collection of our results suggests that lipid microdomain affects the interaction of S. agalactiae type III belonging to the hypervirulent ST-17 with HUVEC cells through PI3K/Akt signaling pathway.