Wall teichoic acids mediate increased virulence in Staphylococcus aureus

Abstract

Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are the cause of a severe pandemic consisting primarily of skin and soft tissue infections. The underlying pathomechanisms have not been fully understood and we report here a mechanism that plays an important role for the elevated virulence of CA-MRSA. Surprisingly, skin abscess induction in an animal model was correlated with the amount of a major cell wall component of S. aureus, termed wall teichoic acid (WTA). CA-MRSA exhibited increased cell-wall-associated WTA content (WTA^high) and thus were more active in inducing abscess formation via a WTA-dependent and T-cell-mediated mechanism than S. aureus strains with a WTA^low phenotype. We show here that WTA is directly involved in S. aureus strain-specific virulence and provide insight into the underlying molecular mechanisms that could guide the development of novel anti-infective strategies.