Cell envelope modulation in oral streptococci

细菌利用其细胞表面的成分与环境和宿主细胞相互作用。我们现在认识到，细菌可以调节或改变其细胞表面这些成分的相对数量，这种细胞表面调节的能力对细菌成为成功的病原体或在不断变化的环境中生存起着重要作用。我们的研究是以口腔细菌戈登链球菌为模型，研究细菌如何改变其细胞表面的组成。戈登氏链霉菌是研究细胞表面调控的良好模式菌，因为它生活在一个因饮食而频繁变化的环境中。此外，口腔中有两种类型的表面，牙齿(硬组织)和粘膜(软组织)，供细菌定植。为了应对不断变化的环境和两种不同类型的定植表面，我们认为戈尔登葡萄球菌需要调节细胞表面成分才能成功。我们将使用分子和生化技术来了解细胞表面调节的机制。这项研究的意义在于，这些结果将提供对戈登葡萄球菌细胞表面如何修饰的基本理解，而这一发现可能也适用于其他细菌。因此，研究成果将在帮助设计预防传染病的新方法方面发挥很大作用。

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.