A Genomic Analysis of Osmotolerance in Staphylococcus aureus

Authors

Dylan Casey, Department of Biological Sciences, Munster Technological University, Bishopstown Campus, Cork, Ireland
Roy D. Sleator, Department of Biological Sciences, Munster Technological University, Bishopstown Campus, Cork, IrelandFollow

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5846-3938

Document Type

Article

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Disciplines

Biology | Life Sciences

Publication Details

Published in Gene.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Dylan Casey: Writing - original draft, Formal analysis, Investigation.

Roy D. Sleator: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration.

Abstract

A key phenotypic characteristic of the Gram-positive bacterial pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus, is its ability to grow in low aw environments. A homology transfer based approach, using the well characterised osmotic stress response systems of Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli, was used to identify putative osmotolerance loci in Staphylococcus aureus ST772-MRSA-V. A total of 17 distinct putative hyper and hypo-osmotic stress response systems, comprising 78 genes, were identified. The ST772-MRSA-V genome exhibits significant degeneracy in terms of the osmotic stress response; with three copies of opuD, two copies each of nhaK and mrp/mnh, and five copies of opp. Furthermore, regulation of osmotolerance in ST772-MRSA-V appears to be mediated at the transcriptional, translational, and post-translational levels.

Recommended Citation

Dylan Casey, Roy D. Sleator, A genomic analysis of osmotolerance in Staphylococcus aureus, Gene, 2020,145268, ISSN 0378-1119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gene.2020.145268. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378111920309379)