Bacterial Co-culture Barrier Disruption

To examine the barrier disruption and innate immune response to bacterial co-culture, several uropathogenic strains was employed. Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains UTI89 (Mulvey et al., 2001 (link)), CFT073 (Mobley et al., 1990 (link)) (ATCC 700928), and E. coli 83972 (bei Resources) associated with asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU) were grown in Luria-Bertani (LB, Sigma Aldrich) broth statically at 37°C for 48 h to induce expression of type 1 pili. Previously published clinical isolates were also tested: Enterococcus faecalis from a patient with UTI (E. faecalis 36 [EF36] (Lau et al., 2020 (link)); E. faecalis from an asymptomatic healthy male E. faecalis 77 [EF77] (Sathiananthamoorthy et al., 2019 (link)) and Streptococcus agalactiae from an asymptomatic healthy female (Sathiananthamoorthy et al., 2019 (link)) (Group B Streptococcus), were grown overnight in Tryptone Soya Broth (TSB, Thermo Fisher Scientific) at 37°C.