Loading...
Phenol-soluble modulins (PSMs) — peptide toxins secreted by essentially all pathogenic staphylococci — have crucial roles in pathogenesis, including lysis of red and white blood cells, production of biofilm, and triggering of inflammatory responses. Although PSMs are a potential target for drug development, their amino acid sequence diversity has hampered progress on this front. However, the presence of certain structural features in all staphylococcal PSMs suggests a single, shared mechanism of secretion. Investigators recently set out to identify this PSM export mechanism.
A set of four pmt genes was found to encode an adenosine triphosphate–binding cassette transporter and to be present in all staphylococci but absent in other bacteria. W…