Affiliation:
1. Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of Washington , Seattle, Washington, USA
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Folic acid and its derivatives are required for the synthesis of purines, pyrimidines, and some amino acids. Antifolate antibiotics that target the folic acid metabolism pathway are commonly used for the treatment of listeriosis caused by the intracellular pathogen
Listeria monocytogenes
(
Lm
). In recent work in
mBio
, Feng et al. sought to understand the role of folic acid metabolism in
Lm
virulence (Y. Feng, S. Chang, D. A. Portnoy, 2023, mBio
https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.01074-23
). The authors discovered that N-formylmethionine, an amino acid utilized by bacteria to initiate protein synthesis, is crucial for
Lm
intracellular growth and pathogenesis. Surprisingly, purines and thymidine were found to be dispensable for
Lm
infection. Together these results demonstrate that while
Lm
can obtain many essential nutrients from the host cytosol, including purines and most amino acids, it requires N-formylmethionine biosynthesis to properly regulate translation initiation during infection.
Funder
HHS | NIH | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology