Grey variants of the live vaccine strain of Francisella tularensis lack lipopolysaccharide O-antigen, show reduced ability to survive in macrophages and do not induce protective immunity in mice.
Hartley, Gill;
Taylor, Rosa;
Prior, Jo;
Newstead, Sarah;
Hitchen, Paul G;
Morris, Howard R;
Dell, Anne;
Titball, Richard W;
(2006)
Grey variants of the live vaccine strain of Francisella tularensis lack lipopolysaccharide O-antigen, show reduced ability to survive in macrophages and do not induce protective immunity in mice.
Vaccine, 24 (7).
pp. 989-996.
ISSN 0264-410X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2005.08.075
Permanent Identifier
Use this Digital Object Identifier when citing or linking to this resource.
Francisella tularensis live vaccine strain (LVS) produces two colony types when grown on solid media, often referred to as blue variants (BV) and grey variants (GV). Whereas blue variant bacteria possessed a lipopolysaccharide O-side chain, grey variant bacteria lacked O-side chains. Grey variant bacteria appeared in stationary phase bacterial cultures and could be identified using a novel FACS-based assay. Compared to blue variant bacteria, grey variants showed a reduced ability to infect and survive in macrophages. The immunisation of mice with blue variant bacteria, but not grey variant bacteria, induced protective immunity towards fully virulent F. tularensis.