Molecular Biology Commons^™

The Role Of Secreted Proteases In Regulating Disease Progression In Staphylococcus Aureus, Brittney D. Gimza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Staphylococcus aureus is a highly successful pathogen capable of producing a wealth of virulence factors in the human host. Of note, ten extracellular proteases are produced alongside these virulence factors and play a multifaceted role during infection. They not only cleave host proteins to promote bacterial invasion, immune evasion and survival, but also control disease progression by modulating the stability of self-derived pathogenic determinants. The importance of the secreted proteases modulating virulence factor stability is evidenced by our groups previous finding that a protease-null strain has a substantially increased infectious capacity in a murine model of sepsis; resulting from the …