Straume Daniel, Stamsås Gro Anita, Håvarstein Leiv Sigve
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO-1432 Ås, Norway.
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO-1432 Ås, Norway.
Infect Genet Evol. 2015 Jul;33:371-80. doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2014.10.020. Epub 2014 Nov 4.
Streptococcus pneumoniae is a frequent colonizer of the human nasopharynx that has the potential to cause severe infections such as pneumonia, bacteremia and meningitis. Despite considerable efforts to reduce the burden of pneumococcal disease, it continues to be a major public health problem. After the Second World War, antimicrobial therapy was introduced to fight pneumococcal infections, followed by the first effective vaccines more than half a century later. These clinical interventions generated a selection pressure that drove the evolution of vaccine-escape mutants and strains that were highly resistant against antibiotics. The remarkable ability of S. pneumoniae to acquire drug resistance and evade vaccine pressure is due to its recombination-mediated genetic plasticity. S. pneumoniae is competent for natural genetic transformation, a property that enables the pneumococcus to acquire new traits by taking up naked DNA from the environment and incorporating it into its genome through homologous recombination. In the present paper, we review current knowledge on pneumococcal transformation, and discuss how the pneumococcus uses this mechanism to adapt and survive under adverse and fluctuating conditions.
肺炎链球菌是人类鼻咽部常见的定植菌，有可能引发严重感染，如肺炎、菌血症和脑膜炎。尽管为减轻肺炎球菌疾病负担付出了巨大努力，但它仍然是一个重大的公共卫生问题。第二次世界大战后，引入了抗菌疗法来对抗肺炎球菌感染，半个多世纪后出现了第一种有效的疫苗。这些临床干预措施产生了选择压力，推动了疫苗逃逸突变体和对抗生素高度耐药菌株的进化。肺炎链球菌获得耐药性和逃避疫苗压力的显著能力归因于其重组介导的遗传可塑性。肺炎链球菌具有自然遗传转化能力，这一特性使肺炎球菌能够通过从环境中摄取裸DNA并通过同源重组将其整合到基因组中获得新特性。在本文中，我们综述了关于肺炎球菌转化的现有知识，并讨论了肺炎球菌如何利用这一机制在不利和多变的条件下适应和生存。
