Authors: Stefanie Wanner, Jessica Schade, Daniela Keinhörster, Nicola Weller, Shilpa E. George, Larissa Kull, Jochen Bauer, Timo Grau, Volker Winstel, Henriette Stoy, Dorothee Kretschmer, Julia Kolata, Christiane Wolz, Barbara M. Bröker, Christopher Weidenmaier
Summary:
Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are the cause of a severe pandemic consisting primarily of skin and soft tissue infections. The underlying pathomechanisms have not been fully understood and we report here a mechanism that plays an important role for the elevated virulence of CA-MRSA. Surprisingly, skin abscess induction in an animal model was correlated with the amount of a major cell wall component of S. aureus, termed wall teichoic acid (WTA). CA-MRSA exhibited increased cell-wall-associated WTA content (WTAhigh) and thus were more active in inducing abscess formation via a WTA-dependent and T-cell-mediated mechanism than S. aureus strains with a WTAlow phenotype. We show here that WTA is directly involved in S. aureus strain-specific virulence and provide insight into the underlying molecular mechanisms that could guide the development of novel anti-infective strategies.
Source:
Nature Microbiology; 2017, 2: 16257