Journal article
Sortase A promotes virulence in experimental Staphylococcus lugdunensis endocarditis
S Heilbronner, F Hanses, IR Monk, P Speziale, TJ Foster
Microbiology United Kingdom | SOC GENERAL MICROBIOLOGY | Published : 2013
Abstract
Staphylococcus lugdunensis is a commensal of humans and an opportunistic pathogen. It can cause an aggressive form of infective endocarditis in healthy humans akin to Staphylococcus aureus. Here we compared the virulence of the genome-sequenced S. lugdunensis strain N920143 to S. aureus in an experimental rat endocarditis model. N920143 caused a milder course of disease with lower levels of bacteraemia and smaller endocardial vegetations than S. aureus strain Newman. However, vegetations were comparable to those produced by S. aureus MRSA strain COL. Little is known about virulence factors of S. lugdunensis as systems to manipulate the bacterium genetically are currently limited. Here, we re..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology
Awarded by Science Foundation Ireland
Awarded by Fondazione CARIPLO
Funding Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology for an Embark scholarship (RS2000192), Science Foundation Ireland for a Programme Investigator grant (08/IN.1/B1854) (to T. J. F.) and Fondazione CARIPLO for a grant 'Vaccines 2009-3546' (to P. S.). We thank Irina Fink for excellent technical assistance, Martine Pestel-Caron for supplying S. lugdunensis strains from different clonal complexes and Joan Geoghegan for helpful discussions.