An insertional mutation made in the major cold shock gene cspB in Staphylococcus aureus strain COL, a methicillin-resistant clinical isolate, yielded a mutant that displayed a reduced capacity to respond to cold shock and many phenotypic characteristics of S. aureus small-colony variants: a growth defect at 37°C, a reduction in pigmentation, and altered levels of susceptibility to many antimicrobials. In particular, a cspB null mutant displayed increased resistance to aminoglycosides, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and paraquat and increased susceptibility to daptomycin, teicoplanin, and methicillin. With the exception of the increased susceptibility to methicillin, which was due to a complete loss of the type I staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec element, these properties were restored to wild-type levels by complementation when cspB was expressed in trans. Taken together, our results link a stress response protein (CspB) of S. aureus to important phenotypic properties that include resistance to certain antimicrobials.Staphylococcus aureus is a major global public health problem causing serious, often life-threatening infections in the community and hospital settings that are becoming more difficult to manage with current antibiotic therapy regimens (7). The emergence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in the hospital and community settings, coupled with the increasing number of persistent MRSA infections (25) and multidrugresistant strains, is a growing problem not just for immunocompromised patients but also for otherwise healthy individuals. The virulence of S. aureus strains is multifactorial and involves the production of extracellular toxins, surface structures that mediate interaction with host cells and resistance to host defenses, transcriptional regulatory processes that control virulence gene expression, and metabolic schemes that allow for adaptation to stresses imposed by the local environment within and outside the human or animal host.The capacity of S. aureus to respond to environmental stress conditions has been the subject of recent investigations (1, 33) and is imperative for its survival in hostile environments such as extreme temperature. S. aureus can effectively respond and adapt to a decrease in temperature by the expression of cold shock proteins (CSPs).
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