Gut commensals profoundly affect host immunity and intestinal homeostasis, but the impact of commensal eukaryotic protozoans is poorly understood. In a recent Cell paper, Chudnovskiy et al. (2016) identify a commensal protozoan, Tritrichomonas musculis, that can enhance anti-bacterial defenses, but at the cost of increasing intestinal inflammation.
At present, very little is known about how Burkholderia pseudomallei (B. pseudomallei) interacts with its host to elicit melioidosis symptoms. We established a murine acute-phase melioidosis model and used DNA microarray technology to investigate the global host/pathogen interaction. We compared the transcriptome of infected liver and spleen with uninfected tissues over an infection period of 42 hr to identify genes whose expression is altered in response to an acute infection.