Are pathogenic bacteria just looking for food? Metabolism and microbial pathogenesis

Abstract

It is interesting to speculate that the evolutionary drive of microbes to develop pathogenic characteristics was to access the nutrient resources that animals provided. Environments in animals that pathogens colonize have also driven the evolution of new bacterial characteristics to maximize these new nutritional opportunities. This review focuses on genomic and functional aspects of pathogen metabolism that allow efficient utilization of nutrient resources provided by animals. Similar to genes encoding specific virulence traits, some genes encoding metabolic functions have been horizontally acquired by pathogens to provide a selective advantage in host tissues. Selective advantage in host tissues can also be gained in some circumstances by loss of function due to mutations that alter metabolic capabilities. Greater understanding of bacterial metabolism within host tissues should be important for increased understanding of host-pathogen interactions and the development of future therapeutic strategies.

Bacterial peptide transporters: Messengers of nutrition to virulence

“…This may slow down the growth but does not affect survival and therefore leave little scope for the development of resistance. Metabolism associated genes of pathogens have been consistently linked with virulence of major pathogens, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] such as, role of carbon metabolism related pathways like glycolysis 10 and TCA cycle 11 in virulence of Salmonella Typhimurium and requirement of metabolism associated pathways for protection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from host immune system. 9 Salmonella is even known to modulate host to exploit the limited supply of nutrients.…”

Shigella reroutes host cell central metabolism to obtain high-flux nutrient supply for vigorous intracellular growth

“…In general, pathogen metabolism has been recognized as a fundamentally important aspect of infectious diseases, but available data are mostly restricted to qualitative presence/absence of enzymes in pathogen genomes and metabolite or gene expression profiles in various infection models (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Comprehensive quantitative studies on pathogen nutrition, metabolism, and growth are largely lacking.…”

Metabolic sensor governing bacterial virulence in Staphylococcus aureus

“…On the other hand, S. aureus produces a wide array of virulence factors to evade host immune defenses and to derive nutrition either parasitically or destructively from the host during infections (6). Indeed, pathogen exploitation of host nutrients is one of the most fundamental aspects of host-pathogen interactions and infectious diseases (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16). For example, in vertebrate hosts one of the first lines of defense against S. aureus infection is withholding iron to prevent the growth of S. aureus; therefore S. aureus has evolved highly efficient nutrient-retrieval strategies to counteract this nutritional deprivation (11,17,18).…”