Cell envelope modulation in oral streptococci

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Bacteria use components on their cell surface to interact with the environment and the host cells. We now recognize that bacteria can modulate or change the relative amount of these components on their cell surface and this ability of cell surface modulation plays an important role for the bacteria to be a successful pathogen or survival under a changing environment. Our research is to study how bacteria change the composition of their cell surface using the oral bacterium Streptococcus gordonii as a model. S. gordonii is a good model bacterium to study cell surface modulation because it lives in an environment that changes frequently due to eating and drinking. In addition, there are two types of surfaces, tooth (hard tissue) and mucosa (soft tissue), in the mouth for the bacterium to colonize. To deal with the changing environment and the two different types of colonizing surfaces, we believe S. gordonii needs to modulate the cell surface components to be successful. We will use molecular and biochemical techniques to understand the mechanism of cell surface modulation. The significance of the research is that the results will provide fundamental understandings of how the cell surface is modified in S. gordonii and the findings will likely be true for other bacteria. Therefore, the research results will play a big role in helping to design new methods to prevent infectious diseases.