In Gram-negative bacteria, the introduction of disulfide bonds into folding proteins occurs in the periplasm and is catalyzed by donation of an energetically unstable disulfide from DsbA, which is subsequently re-oxidized through interaction with DsbB. Gram-positive bacteria lack a classic periplasm but nonetheless encode Dsb-like proteins. Staphylococcus aureus encodes just one Dsb protein, a DsbA, and no DsbB. Here we report the crystal structure of S. aureus DsbA (SaDsbA), which incorporates a thioredoxin fold with an inserted helical domain, like its Escherichia coli counterpart EcDsbA, but it lacks the characteristic hydrophobic patch and has a truncated binding groove near the active site. These findings suggest that SaDsbA has a different substrate specificity than EcDsbA. Thermodynamic studies indicate that the oxidized and reduced forms of SaDsbA are energetically equivalent, in contrast to the energetically unstable disulfide form of EcDsbA. Further, the partial complementation of EcDsbA by SaDsbA is independent of EcDsbB and biochemical assays show that SaDsbA does not interact with EcDsbB. The identical stabilities of oxidized and reduced SaDsbA may facilitate direct re-oxidation of the protein by extracellular oxidants, without the need for DsbB.The formation of native disulfide bonds through air oxidation of cysteine pairs is a slow reaction and organisms ranging from bacteria to humans encode enzymatic systems to catalyze the process. In eukaryotes, oxidative folding in the endoplasmic reticulum is primarily catalyzed by protein-disulfide isomerases that are reoxidized by Ero1p/Erv2p proteins (reviewed in Ref. 1). In Escherichia coli, dithiol oxidation takes place in the periplasm through the action of the Dsb 3 (Disulfide bond) family of proteins. Dsb proteins form two distinct pathways, the DsbA-DsbB (oxidative) pathway that introduces disulfides indiscriminately, and the DsbC/DsbG-DsbD (isomerization) pathway that shuffles incorrect disulfides (2, 3).Probably the best-studied Dsb protein is EcDsbA, the primary disulfide catalyst in E. coli (reviewed in Refs. 2, 4). This promiscuously oxidizing protein is a 21-kDa monomer containing a CPHC active site in a thioredoxin (TRX) fold with an inserted helical domain of ϳ80 residues. Upon catalyzing disulfide bond formation in substrate proteins, reduced EcDsbA relies on EcDsbB, a quinone reductase, to recover its catalytically active, and higher energy, oxidized form (5