Arachidonic acid stress impacts pneumococcal fatty acid homeostasis

BA Eijkelkamp; SL Begg; VG Pederick; C Trapetti; MK Gregory; JJ Whittall; JC Paton; CA McDevitt

Journal article

Arachidonic acid stress impacts pneumococcal fatty acid homeostasis

BA Eijkelkamp, SL Begg, VG Pederick, C Trapetti, MK Gregory, JJ Whittall, JC Paton, CA McDevitt

Frontiers in Microbiology | FRONTIERS MEDIA SA | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00813

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Abstract

Free fatty acids hold dual roles during infection, serving to modulate the host immune response while also functioning directly as antimicrobials. Of particular importance are the long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are not commonly found in bacterial organisms, that have been proposed to have antibacterial roles. Arachidonic acid (AA) is a highly abundant long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid and we examined its effect upon Streptococcus pneumoniae. Here, we observed that in a murine model of S. pneumoniae infection the concentration of AA significantly increases in the blood. The impact of AA stress upon the pathogen was then assessed by a combination of biochemical, biophysical ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Stephanie Neville Author

Christopher McDevitt Author

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Grants

Awarded by Adelaide Research and Innovation, University of Adelaide

Funding Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) through Project Grants 1080784 and 1122582 to CM and Program Grant 1071659 to JP. The work was also funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grants DP150104515 and DP170102102 to JP and CM. BE is a University of Adelaide Beacon Research Fellow, SB is an NHMRC Doherty Fellow (1142695), JP is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and CM is an ARC Future Fellow (FT170100006).