This feeling of
dreading the family reunion because of the inevitable fights with close
relatives is not exclusive to us humans. If bacteria celebrated Christmas, Staphylococcus aureus would be the one
cringing at the thought of seeing its family.
We know S. aureus as a
threatening strong bacterium, capable of making us sick or even killing us. It
can attack almost every organ of our body – but in the face of its family, S. aureus quickly becomes much weaker. Staphylococcus lugdunensis is a relative
of S. aureus and sometimes they even
share a place to live – both like to live inside our nose.
These two
relatives are not peacefully coexisting when they sit around the dinner table inside
your nose on Christmas. Instead, S.
lugdunensis knows exactly how to spoil the dinner and make S. aureus
uncomfortable. Its weapon is called lugdunin.
Lugdunin is the first substance in a completely new class of antibiotics. And
because bacterial table manners leave a lot be desired, lugdunin does not just
make S. aureus uncomfortable – it
kills it [1]! No
wonder, S. aureus is not keen on
spending Christmas with the family…
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| Family feuds make Christmas unbearable for Staphylococcus aureus |
After Christmas,
the beginning of a new year quickly comes around. S. aureus is no bacterium that forgets all the insults, which it
had to endure in the past. So every year, it makes the same New Year’s
resolutions: become resistant against whatever was used to attack it in the
past year. And unlike most of us, S.
aureus is very good at sticking to its resolutions! Since the discovery of
penicillin in the 1940s, we have developed dozens of antibiotics to fight
bacterial infections – S. aureus has
managed to become resistant against every single one! Fortunately for us, these
resistances are not (yet) pooled in a single strain, but nevertheless, we are
running out of weapons. So naturally, when researchers discovered lugdunin,
they tested how fast S. aureus would
be able to become resistant to it. And despite being teased with lugdunin
whenever S. aureus and S. lugdunensis meet, S. aureus can’t seem to find a way to
escape it [1]. S. lugdunensis knows S. aureus much better than we do and
seems to have found a button to push that really hits close to home for S. aureus.
When we become
infected with S. aureus, the bacteria
talk to themselves and to each other. Of course, bacteria can not talk
acoustically, but they can communicate chemically. This helps them coordinate
their attack in our body. Staphylococcus
caprae acts like the talkative aunt that lets no one get a word in
edge-wise. Its (chemical) talking is so penetrating that S. aureus can not
“hear” its own talking anymore – thus it loses much of the ability to infect us
[2]. So far, these quarrels between bacterial family members have not
been translated into an antibiotic that you can take when S. aureus makes you sick. Their
presence nevertheless shows us that looking towards family feuds and long-held
grudges can be a promising path to find new ways to tackle bacterial
infections.
1. Zipperer, A., et al., Human commensals producing a novel
antibiotic impair pathogen colonization. Nature, 2016. 535(7613): p. 511-6.
2. Paharik, A.E., et al., Coagulase-Negative Staphylococcal Strain Prevents Staphylococcus aureus
Colonization and Skin Infection by Blocking Quorum Sensing. Cell Host &
Microbe, 2017.
Further reading on lugdunin:
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