Streptococcus suis exports WapA polymorphic toxins to compete with tonsil microbiota for an optimal colonization
Xinming Pan, Jianan Liu, Ningyuan Zhong, Ruhui Fan, Zhen Zhang, Caiying Li, Huizhen Wu, Zongfu Wu, Qiankun Bai, Jiale Ma · 2025
Read Streptococcus suis exports WapA polymorphic toxins to compete with tonsil microbiota for an optimal colonization by Xinming Pan, Jianan Liu, Ningyuan Zhong, Ruhui Fan, Zhen Zhang, Caiying Li, Huizhen Wu, Zongfu Wu, Qiankun Bai, Jiale Ma (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12704120.txt.
Description
Xinming Pan and co-authors showed in 2025 how a pig pathogen uses a toxin system to win a home in the tonsils. Streptococcus suis infects people as well as pigs, and its tonsil colonization is thought to seed later infection. How it outcompetes the local microbes there was unknown.
The focus is a large wall protein, WapA, a distant cousin of proteins other bacteria use to poison rivals with varied toxin tails. Tests using sequence analysis, protein blots, and head-to-head bacterial contests showed a toxin form tied to two partner proteins. That form reshaped the tonsil microbe mix in the pathogen's favor, in the team's results. Readers get a mechanism for a quiet first step of infection: clear the neighborhood, then settle in.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xinming Pan, Jianan Liu, Ningyuan Zhong, Ruhui Fan, Zhen Zhang, Caiying Li, Huizhen Wu, Zongfu Wu, Qiankun Bai, Jiale Ma |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 60 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |