Resilience of chicken towards Salmonella: using surrogate infection models to define a protective microbiome (ChiSaRe)

In 2021 the European food safety authority (efsa) reported 60,050 cases of Salmonellosis. This makes S. enterica the second most prevalent bacterium for zoonotic infections in humans.¹ These infections are often associated with ingestion of chicken (Gallus domesticus) produce. Besides its ability to infect humans, S. enterica is a threat for its avian host as well. E.g. Serovars S. enterica pullorum and S. enterica galliarum are the causing agents of diseases, associated with mortality rates approaching 100 % in young chicken.²

We currently establish a protective chicken microbiome, that confers resilience S. enterica. The first step was the identification of 10 dominant and representative microbes of the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) of G. domesticus from literature that define a synthetic oligo-chicken microbiota (OCM). These candidates belong to six common orders of bacteria, including Lactobacillales, Bacteriodales and Bifidobacteriales. A commercially available, complex microbiota was shown to inhibit the growth of S. enterica, and this microbiota is used as a positive control to compare the efficiency of the defined OCM. The OCM is subjected to competitive growth assays (CGA) with different strains and mutants of S. enterica to identify promising phenotypes. The OCM will be applied to surrogate infection models, namely larvae of Galleria mellonella and organ-on-chip based on cells of the avian GIT. The models are infected with S. enterica, to investigate possible protective functions of the OCM. The underlying molecular factors will be characterised using omics approaches with a focus on (meta-)transcriptomics and proteomics especially.

¹The European Union One Health 2021 Zoonoses Report; European Food Safety Authority, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control; Report Approved: 11 November 2022; doi: 10.2903/j.efsa.2022.7666

²SHIVAPRASAD H.L.. Fowl typhoid and pullorum disease. Scientific & Technical Review. 2000 08 1; 19 (2): pp. 405-424. doi: https://doi.org/10.20506/rst.19.2.1222