Modification of the pulmonary MyD88 inflammatory response underlies the role of the Yersinia pestis pigmentation locus in primary pneumonic plague

Pneumonic plague, caused by Yersinia pestis, is a rapidly progressing bronchopneumonia involving focal bacterial growth, neutrophilic congestion, and alveolar necrosis. Within a short time after inhalation of Y. pestis, inflammatory cytokines are expressed via the Toll/IL1 adaptor myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88), which facilitates the primary lung infection. We previously showed that Y. pestis lacking the 102kb chromosomal pigmentation locus (pgm) are unable to cause inflammatory damage in the lungs, whereas the WT strain induces the toxic MyD88 pulmonary inflammatory response. In this work, we investigated the involvement of the pgm in skewing the inflammatory response during pneumonic plague. We show that the early MyD88-dependent and -independent cytokine responses to pgm- Y. pestis infection of the lungs are similar yet distinct from those that occur during pgm+ infection. Furthermore, we found that MyD88 was necessary to prevent growth of the iron-starved pgm- Y. pestis despite the presence of iron chelators lactoferrin and transferrin. However, while this induced neutrophil recruitment, there was no hyper-inflammatory response and pulmonary disease was mild without MyD88. In contrast, growth in blood and tissues progressed rapidly in the absence of MyD88, due to an almost total loss of serum IFNγ. We further show that the expression of MyD88 by myeloid cells is important to control bacteremia, but not the primary lung infection. The combined data indicate distinct roles for myeloid and non-myeloid MyD88, and suggest that expression of the pgm locus is necessary to skew the inflammatory response in the lungs to cause pneumonic plague.