School of Podiatric Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-4-2023
Abstract
Streptococcus mitis is a normal member of the human oral microbiota and a leading opportunistic pathogen causing infective endocarditis (IE). Despite the complex interactions between S. mitis and the human host, understanding of S. mitis physiology and its mechanisms of adaptation to host-associated environments is inadequate, especially compared with other IE bacterial pathogens. This study reports the growth-promoting effects of human serum on S. mitis and other pathogenic streptococci, including S. oralis, S. pneumoniae, and S. agalactiae. Using transcriptomic analyses, we identified that, with the addition of human serum, S. mitis downregulates uptake systems for metal ions and sugars, fatty acid biosynthetic genes, and genes involved in stress response and other processes related with growth and replication. S. mitis upregulates uptake systems for amino acids and short peptides in response to human serum. Zinc availability and environmental signals sensed by the induced short peptide binding proteins were not sufficient to confer the growth-promoting effects. More investigation is required to establish the mechanism for growth promotion. Overall, our study contributes to the fundamental understanding of S. mitis physiology under host-associated conditions.
Recommended Citation
Wei, Y., Sturges, C. I., & Palmer, K. L. (2023). Human serum supplementation promotes Streptococcus mitis growth and induces specific transcriptomic responses. Microbiology Spectrum, 11(3), e05129-22. https://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.05129-22
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Microbiology Spectrum
Academic Level
faculty
DOI
10.1128/spectrum.05129-22
Comments
© 2023 Wei et al. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.