Pathogenic Microbiology Commons^™

Iron And Copper Homeostasis In Staphylococcus Aureus, Holly A. Laakso

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

All microorganisms require transition metals for key metabolic processes, thus during infection microbial access to essential metals is tightly regulated by the host in a process termed nutritional immunity. Iron acquisition is critical to the pathogenesis of the formidable human pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus, which utilizes heme-uptake systems and two high-affinity iron-scavenging siderophores, staphyloferrin A (SA) and staphyloferrin B (SB) for iron acquisition. In this study, I identify sbnI as encoding a transcription factor required for expression of genes in the sbn operon, the biosynthetic operon for SB synthesis. I also show that SbnI is a novel hemoprotein, where binding …