Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae enhances the growth and virulence of Pasteurella multocida in co-infection

In this study, P. multocida (serotype A or D) was co-cultured with A. pleuropneumonia (serotype 1), revealing that the growth rates of P. multocida serotype A and D during their decline phase in the co-culture group were significantly higher than those in the mono-culture group. In addition, when P. multocida (serotype A or D) was co-infected with A. pleuropneumonia (serotype 1) in mice, it was found that the bacterial load in the lung tissues of P. multocida in the co-infection group was significantly higher than that of mono-infection group. Then, we analyzed the differential gene expression profiles of P. multocida between co-culture and mono-culture, and used Gene Ontology (GO) term enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis to identify key genes and pathways. The results found that the differentially expressed genes of P. multocida in co-culture were widely involved in key pathways such as metabolism, genetic information processing, and environmental adaptation. Taken together, these data demonstrated that A. pleuropneumonia enhances the growth and virulence of P. multocida by reshaping the transcriptional profile of P. multocida. Overall design: Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for P. multocida between co-culture and mono-culture after 20 h