background and objectives: streptococcus agalactiae is the leading cause of bacterial sepsis and meningitis in newborns and results in pneumonia and bacteremia in adults. a number of s. agalactiae components are involved in colonization of target cells. destruction of peptidoglycan and division of covalently linked daughter cells is mediated by autolysins. in this study, autolytic activity and ...

21 Objectives: Whether synergistic antimicrobial combination in vitro would be beneficial in 22 down regulation of pneumococcal virulent genes and associated inflammation of the lung 23 tissue induced by multi-drug resistant S. pneumoniae infection in vivo needs to be elucidated 24 for considering this mode of therapy in case of severe pneumococcal infection. 25 Methods: We investigated the in ...

Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (S. suis 2) is an important swine and human pathogen responsible for septicemia and meningitis. A novel gene, designated atl and encoding a major autolysin of S. suis 2 virulent strain HA9801, was identified and characterized in this study. The Atl protein contains 1,025 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 113 kDa and has a conserved N-acetylmuramoyl-l-a...

The lysis of Staphylococcus aureus FDA 209P induced by benzylpenicillin was completely inhibited by cellular lipoteichoic acid isolated from an homologous organism. The cells prevented from penicillin-induced lysis were in static state and did not lose viability. The lipoteichoic acid inhibited either extracellular autolysin activity in culture supernatant or autolysis of whole cells in exponen...

BACKGROUND The role played by pneumolysin and autolysin in pneumococcal meningitis is poorly understood. METHODS A rat model was used to investigate the disease, in which surgical implantation of a cisternal catheter allowed bacterial instillation and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sampling. RESULTS CSF infection of rats with wild-type pneumococci caused meningitis within 26 h, whereas isogenic ...

Mutants of Streptococcus pneumoniae that contain active autolysin and yet cannot be induced to lyse during treatment with penicillin (Lyt+Tol+ mutants) have been described. We have now shown that these mutants are temperature dependent (32 "C); at 37 "C these bacteria underwent penicillin-induced lysis. In addition, mutants at the lysis-permissive temperature showed the socalled 'paradoxical re...