Affiliation:
1. Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
2. Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armada ESPE, Sangolquí, Ecuador
Abstract
ABSTRACT
During infection, pathogens must obtain all inorganic nutrients, such as phosphate, from the host. Despite the essentiality of phosphate for all forms of life, how
Staphylococcus aureus
obtains this nutrient during infection is unknown. Differing from
Escherichia coli
, the paradigm for bacterial phosphate acquisition, which has two inorganic phosphate (P
i
) importers, genomic analysis suggested that
S. aureus
possesses three distinct P
i
transporters: PstSCAB, PitA, and NptA. While
pitA
and
nptA
are expressed in phosphate-replete media, expression of all three transporters is induced by phosphate limitation. The loss of a single transporter did not affect
S. aureus
. However, disruption of any two systems significantly reduced P
i
accumulation and growth in divergent environments. These findings indicate that PstSCAB, PitA, and NptA have overlapping but nonredundant functions, thus expanding the environments in which
S. aureus
can successfully obtain P
i
. Consistent with this idea, in a systemic mouse model of disease, loss of any one transporter did not decrease staphylococcal virulence. However, loss of NptA in conjunction with either PstSCAB or PitA significantly reduced the ability of
S. aureus
to cause infection. These observations suggest that P
i
acquisition via NptA is particularly important for the pathogenesis of
S. aureus
. While our analysis suggests that NptA homologs are widely distributed among bacteria, closely related less pathogenic staphylococcal species do not possess this importer. Altogether, these observations indicate that P
i
uptake by
S. aureus
differs from established models and that acquisition of a third transporter enhances the ability of the bacterium to cause infection.
Funder
James R. Beck Graduate Research Fellowship
HHS | NIH | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
March of Dimes Foundation
Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Immunology,Microbiology,Parasitology
Cited by
20 articles.
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