“…Additional roles of SLS during host infections are also becoming clear, since the toxin is highly upregulated during invasive GAS infections, and it has been shown that GAS lacking the toxin exhibit significant deficiencies in causing skin lesions and disseminating in vivo ( Datta et al., 2005 ; Hirose et al., 2019 ). SLS has also been shown to contribute to the degradation of epithelial cell junctions to promote invasive disease, induce lysis of multiple nonerythrocytic cell types, and have other significant effects in both in vivo and in vitro infection models ( Ginsburg, 1972 ; Betschel et al., 1998 ; Miyoshi-akiyama et al., 2005 ; Sumitomo et al., 2011 ; Flaherty et al., 2015 ; Hirose et al., 2019 ; Lei et al., 2019 ). These include the ability of SLS to exacerbate the host inflammatory response, thereby disrupting the ability of the host immune system to clear the infection without over-activation that results in damaging hyperinflammation ( Flaherty et al., 2015 ; Castiglia et al., 2016 ; Flaherty et al., 2018 ; von Beek et al., 2019 ).…”