Bordetella pertussis adapts to human nasal mucosa through biofilm-associated virulence reprogramming and host-defense attenuation

We hypothesized that B. pertussis infection triggers transcriptional changes in both the bacterial and the host cells thereby shaping the infection process. We evaluated this hypothesis by employing high-depth and high-throughput dual RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to investigate the global host and bacterial transcriptomic responses during infection of HNEC and identify canonical pathways temporally enriched after infection.

RNA isolated from B. pertussis cells grown planktonically in SS media was used as the bacterial baseline control (Bc) for bacterial transcriptomic analysis. Taken together, our data reveals important insights about key pathogenic events, and host and bacterial pathways modulated during infection of the human nasal epithelium.