Poring over pores: α-hemolysin and Panton-Valentine leukocidin in Staphylococcus aureus pneumonia (original) (raw)

Nature Medicine volume 13, pages 1405–1406 (2007)Cite this article

To the editor:

S. aureus pneumonia causes mortality in healthy individuals or hospital settings1, and recent increases in morbidity are attributed to the rapid spread of community-associated, methicillin-resistant strains (CA-MRSA)2,3. We previously described a mouse model of staphylococcal pneumonia that mimics clinicopathologic features of human disease and identified α-hemolysin (Hla) as an essential virulence factor in S. aureus Newman, a human clinical isolate4. Labandeira-Rey et al.5 used the laboratory strain S. aureus RN6390 to identify Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) as another virulence factor essential for lung infections. Hla and PVL are members of the family of β-channel pore-forming toxins (β-CFT), which assemble into heptameric structures that penetrate cell membranes6. In contrast to Hla, the gene for which is expressed by almost all staphylococcal isolates, PVL is secreted only by strains lysogenized with a bacteriophage carrying lukS-PV and lukF-PV, the structural genes for PVL2,7. Here we examined the contribution of β-CFTs to the pathogenesis of lung infections with clinically relevant CA-MRSA strains, LAC (USA300) and MW2 (USA400)3. (Animal experiments were reviewed, approved and conducted in accordance with guidelines set by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at The University of Chicago.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Microbiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA
    Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg & Olaf Schneewind
  2. Pediatrics, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA
    Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg
  3. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University School of Medicine Northwest, Gary, 46408, Indiana, USA
    Taeok Bae
  4. Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, 59840, Montana, USA
    Michael Otto & Frank R DeLeo

Authors

  1. Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg
  2. Taeok Bae
  3. Michael Otto
  4. Frank R DeLeo
  5. Olaf Schneewind

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Bubeck Wardenburg, J., Bae, T., Otto, M. et al. Poring over pores: α-hemolysin and Panton-Valentine leukocidin in Staphylococcus aureus pneumonia.Nat Med 13, 1405–1406 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1207-1405

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