Back

The Staphylococcus aureus prophage-encoded SSBP attenuates virulence and enhances IL-6-mediated macrophage clearance

Ahmad-Mansour, N.; Abi Najem, C. N.; Martin, M.; Plumet, L.; Huc-Brandt, S.; Morsli, M.; Francois, P.; Sotto, A.; Dunyach-Remy, C.; Lavigne, J.-P.; MOLLE, V.

2025-03-13 microbiology
10.1101/2025.03.13.643069 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Pathogens often manipulate host immune responses to promote infection. Here, we describe a novel mechanism by which a secreted prophage-encoded single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSBP) attenuates Staphylococcus aureus virulence while enhancing host immune defenses. SSBP, encoded by the ROSA-like prophage in a colonizing, reduced-virulence strain of S. aureus (NSA1385), significantly increases bacterial susceptibility to macrophage-mediated killing in vitro and reduces pathogenicity in a zebrafish infection model. Treatment with purified recombinant SSBP decreases bacterial survival within macrophages and demonstrates therapeutic potential. Notably, SSBP activates macrophages via interleukin-6 (IL-6), a pro-inflammatory cytokine that promotes bacterial clearance and macrophage activation. These findings uncover an unexpected prophage-derived mechanism in a colonizing S. aureus strain that attenuates virulence while stimulating host immunity, offering promising avenues for anti-infective therapies and immunomodulatory strategies.

Matching journals

The top 8 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.