counters phosphate limitation by scavenging wall teichoic acids from other staphylococci via the teichoicase GlpQ.

is part of the human nasal and skin microbiomes along with other bacterial commensals and opportunistic pathogens. Nutrients are scarce in these habitats, demanding effective nutrient acquisition and competition strategies. How copes with phosphate limitation is still unknown. Wall teichoic acid (WTA), a polyol-phosphate polymer, could serve as a phosphate source, but whether can utilize it during phosphate starvation remains unknown. secretes a glycerophosphodiesterase, GlpQ, that cleaves a broad variety of glycerol-3-phosphate (GroP) headgroups of deacylated phospholipids, providing this bacterium with GroP as a carbon and phosphate source. Here we demonstrate that GlpQ can also use glycerophosphoglycerol derived from GroP WTA from coagulase-negative , , and , which share the nasal and skin habitats with Therefore, GlpQ is the first reported WTA-hydrolyzing enzyme, or teichoicase, from Activity assays revealed that unmodified WTA is the preferred GlpQ substrate, and the results from MS analysis suggested that GlpQ uses an exolytic cleavage mechanism. Importantly, GlpQ did not hydrolyze the ribitol-5-phosphate WTA polymers of , underscoring its role in interspecies competition rather than in cell wall homeostasis or WTA recycling. expression was strongly up-regulated under phosphate limitation, and GlpQ allowed to grow in the presence of GroP WTA as the sole phosphate source. Our study reveals a novel and unprecedented strategy of for acquiring phosphate from bacterial competitors under the phosphate-limiting conditions in the nasal or skin environments.