Commensal Bacteria and Colonic Tissue (IMAGE)

PLOS

Commensal Bacteria and Colonic Tissue

Caption

Left, commensal bacteria (red) in the intestine are kept at a distance from the colonic tissue by a thick layer of mucus (green). Antibiotics perturb the integrity of the mucus layer, facilitating invasion by some bacterial species such as Klebsiella pneumoniae (middle) and to a lesser extend VRE (right). Infiltration of the colonic mucus layer may prove to be a critical step in bacterial spread to other sites including the bloodstream.

Credit

Silvia Caballero, CC-BY

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