Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology (Feb 2018)

Triclosan Enhances the Clearing of Pathogenic Intracellular Salmonella or Candida albicans but Disturbs the Intestinal Microbiota through mTOR-Independent Autophagy

  • Chao Wang,
  • Zhongyang Yu,
  • Xiaochen Shi,
  • Xudong Tang,
  • Yang Wang,
  • Xueyan Wang,
  • Yanan An,
  • Shulin Li,
  • Yan Li,
  • Xuefei Wang,
  • Wenjing Luan,
  • Zhaobin Chen,
  • Zhaobin Chen,
  • Mingyuan Liu,
  • Mingyuan Liu,
  • Lu Yu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcimb.2018.00049
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8

Abstract

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Triclosan (TCS) is a broad-spectrum antimicrobial agent, whose well-known antibacterial mechanism is inhibiting lipid synthesis. Autophagy, an innate immune response, is an intracellular process that delivers the cargo including pathogens to lysosomes for degradation. In this study, we first demonstrated that TCS induced autophagy in a dose-dependent manner in non-phagocytic cells (HeLa) and in macrophages (Raw264.7) and in vivo. The western blot results also revealed that TCS induced autophagy via the AMPK/ULK1 and JNK/ERK/p38 pathways independent of mTOR. The immunofluorescence results indicated that TCS up-regulated the expression of the ubiquitin receptors NDP52 and p62 and strengthened the co-localization of these receptors with Salmonella enterica Typhimurium (S. typhimurium) or Candida albicans (C. albicans) in infected MΦ cells. In addition, sub-lethal concentrations of TCS enhanced the clearing of the pathogens S. typhimurium or C. albicans in infected MΦ and in corresponding mouse infection models in vivo. Specifically, we found that a sub-inhibitory concentration of TCS induced autophagy, leading to an imbalance of the intestinal microflora in mice through the analysis of 16s rRNA Sequencing. Together, these results demonstrated that TCS induced autophagy, which enhanced the killing against pathogenic S. typhimurium or C. albicans within mammal cells but broke the balance of the intestinal microflora.

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