The purine biosynthesis regulator PurR moonlights as a virulence regulator in Staphylococcus aureus.

ABSTRACT: The pathogen Staphylococcus aureus colonizes and infects a variety of different sites within the human body. To adapt to these different environments, S. aureus relies on a complex and finely tuned regulatory network. While some of these networks have been well-elucidated, the functions of more than 50% of the transcriptional regulators in S. aureus remain unexplored. Here, we assess the contribution of the LacI family of metabolic regulators to staphylococcal virulence. We found that inactivating the purine biosynthesis regulator purR resulted in a strain that was acutely virulent in bloodstream infection models in mice and in ex vivo models using primary human neutrophils. Remarkably, these enhanced pathogenic traits are independent of purine biosynthesis, as

SUBMITTER: Sause WE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6613142 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature