Enzymes that increase susceptibility to the antimicrobial enzyme lysozyme.

What is it about?

Group A Streptococcus causes a range of diseases in humans such as skin and soft tissue infections, toxic shock and rheumatic fever. We have generated mutant strains that lack two previously uncharacterised enzymes and show that they possess peptidoglycan deacetylase activity. This means, they remove an acetyl group from the peptidoglycan polymer that forms the bacterial cell wall. As a consequence, the bacteria became more susceptible to lysozyme and to killing in whole human blood. In addition, the mutants showed reduced survival in an insect infection model demonstrating that the two deacetylases are important factors for causing disease.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The two deacetylases might be potential targets for the development of therapeutics against Group A Streptococcus infection.