Expression of Bacillus cereus Virulence-Related Genes in an Ocular Infection-Related Environment

B. cereus is the causative agent of gastrointestinal infections, but can also cause a serious infection of the eye that often results in blindness or enucleation. Current therapeutic measures often fail to mitigate these poor outcomes. This necessitates the development of new treatment modalities based on new targets. To begin to better define those B. cereus factors with roles in intraocular infection, we analyzed the expression of genes related to gastrointestinal infections, as well as those with both known and hypothesized roles in intraocular infections, after growth in an ex vivo vitreous. Potentially targetable candidate genes were demonstrated to be expressed in vitreous, which suggests that these genes might contribute to the unique virulence of B. cereus endophthalmitis. Importantly, our results lay the groundwork for assessing the expression of these genes in vivo and defining the virulome of B. cereus in intraocular infections.