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Why do some bacteria on the skin elicit inflammation and an immune reaction while others don't? Investigators hypothesized that the adaptive immune system plays a role in mediating tolerance to skin commensal bacteria. They developed a model system to study antigen-specific responses to the skin commensal bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidis.
To allow for standardization of relative antigen expression, they modified S. epidermidis to express a 2W peptide linked to a fluorescent protein associated with staphylococcal sp. bacteria (Epi-2W). Like native S. epidermidis, the modified Epi-2W failed to elicit inflammation when applied to the back skin of adult mice. That antigens of the colonizing Epi-2W bacteria penetrated the intact barrier into …