Serratia marcescens



The opportunistic human pathogen Serratia is also pathogenic to nematodes. In humans, Serratia marcescens can cause meningitis, endocarditis and pyelonephritis. Like P.aeruginosa, S. marcescens can kill C. elegans either by a toxin-mediated fast mechanism or by a slow-pacing infection. Studying S. marcescens infection in C. elegans (for example its virulence-altering mutations) offers several advantages over studying this pathogens in other hosts such as mice. For instance, worms can be cultivated in 96-well microtitre plates or 24-well culture plates and thousands of bacterial clones can be tested on these nematodes. Considering the space and the number of required animals, such an approach is not possible with mice (Kurz and Ewbank, 2000).