Willett Julia L E, Dunny Gary M
Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Microbiol Mol Biol Rev. 2025 Mar 27;89(1):e0008123. doi: 10.1128/mmbr.00081-23. Epub 2024 Dec 23.
SUMMARY is a significant resident of the gastrointestinal tract of most animals, including humans. Although generally non-pathogenic in healthy hosts, this microbe is adept at the exploitation of compromises in host immune functions, resulting in life-threatening opportunistic infections whose treatments are complicated by a high degree of intrinsic and acquired resistance to antimicrobial chemotherapy. Historically, progress in enterococcal research was limited by a lack of experimental models that replicate natural infection pathways and the relevance of studies to the natural biology of the organism. In this review, we summarize the history of enterococcal research during the 20th and early 21st centuries and describe more recent genetic and genomic tools and screens developed to address challenges in the field. We also describe how the results of recent studies reveal the importance of previously uncharacterized enterococcal genes, and we provide examples of interesting determinants that have emerged as important contributors to enterococcal biology. These factors may also serve as targets for future vaccines and chemotherapeutic agents to combat life-threatening hospital infections.
粪肠球菌是包括人类在内的大多数动物胃肠道中的重要定植菌。虽然在健康宿主中通常无致病性，但这种微生物善于利用宿主免疫功能的缺陷，导致危及生命的机会性感染，而其治疗因对抗菌化疗具有高度的固有耐药性和获得性耐药性而变得复杂。从历史上看，肠球菌研究的进展受到缺乏能够复制自然感染途径的实验模型以及研究与该生物体自然生物学相关性的限制。在这篇综述中，我们总结了20世纪和21世纪初肠球菌研究的历史，并描述了为应对该领域挑战而开发的最新遗传和基因组工具及筛选方法。我们还描述了近期研究结果如何揭示以前未被表征的肠球菌基因的重要性，并提供了一些有趣的决定因素的例子，这些因素已成为肠球菌生物学的重要贡献者。这些因素也可能成为未来疫苗和化疗药物对抗危及生命的医院感染的靶点。
