Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (25)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (25)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Journal article (21)
- Doctoral Thesis (4)
Keywords
- blood (25) (remove)
Institute
- Rudolf-Virchow-Zentrum (5)
- Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften (4)
- Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik I (3)
- Institut für Humangenetik (2)
- Klinik und Poliklinik für Allgemein-, Viszeral-, Gefäß- und Kinderchirurgie (Chirurgische Klinik I) (2)
- Klinik und Poliklinik für Anästhesiologie (ab 2004) (2)
- Lehrstuhl für Biochemie (2)
- Graduate School of Life Sciences (1)
- Institut für Experimentelle Biomedizin (1)
- Institut für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie (1)
Old yellow enzymes (OYEs) are widely found in the bacterial, fungal, and plant kingdoms but absent in humans and have been used as biocatalysts for decades. However, OYEs’ physiological function in bacterial stress response and infection situations remained enigmatic. As a pathogen, the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus adapts to numerous stress conditions during pathogenesis. Here, we show that in S. aureus genome, two paralogous genes (ofrA and ofrB) encode for two OYEs. We conducted a bioinformatic analysis and found that ofrA is conserved among all publicly available representative staphylococcal genomes and some Firmicutes. Expression of ofrA is induced by electrophilic, oxidative, and hypochlorite stress in S. aureus. Furthermore, ofrA contributes to S. aureus survival against reactive electrophilic, oxygen, and chlorine species (RES, ROS, and RCS) via thiol-dependent redox homeostasis. At the host–pathogen interface, S. aureusΔofrA has defective survival in macrophages and whole human blood and decreased staphyloxanthin production. Overall, our results shed the light onto a novel stress response strategy in the important human pathogen S. aureus.