ArticleInfection and immunity2016
Addiction of Hypertransformable Pneumococcal Isolates to Natural Transformation for In Vivo Fitness and Virulence.
Article in Infection and immunity, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- On the role of choline in natural DNA transformation inFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Point mutations in functionally diverse genes are associated with increased natural DNA transformation in multidrug resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- A 3'UTR-derived small RNA represses pneumolysin synthesis and facilitates pneumococcal brain invasion.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Pn-AqpC-Mediated Fermentation Pattern Coordination with the Two-Component System 07 Regulates Host N-Glycan Degradation of Streptococcus pneumoniae.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Clp ATPases differentially affect natural competence development in Streptococcus mutans.MicrobiologyOpen · 2022Article
- Article
- Transformation of nonencapsulated Streptococcus pneumoniae during systemic infection.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Longitudinal changes in the nasopharyngeal resistome of South African infants using shotgun metagenomic sequencing.PloS one · 2020Article
- Multiplex gene transfer by genetic transformation between isolated S. pneumoniae cells confined in microfluidic droplets.Integrative biology : quantitative biosciences from nano to macro · 2019Article
- Diverse conjugative elements silence natural transformation inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Selective pressure: Rise of the nonencapsulated pneumococcus.PLoS pathogens · 2019Article
- Genetic exchanges are more frequent in bacteria encoding capsules.PLoS genetics · 2018Article
- Novel Immunoprotective Proteins of Streptococcus pneumoniae Identified by Opsonophagocytosis Killing Screen.Infection and immunity · 2018Article
- ABC transporter content diversity inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Evolution via recombination: Cell-to-cell contact facilitates larger recombination events in Streptococcus pneumoniae.PLoS genetics · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 7 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Natural genetic transformation of Streptococcus pneumoniae, an important human pathogen, mediates horizontal gene transfer for the development of drug resistance, modulation of carriage and virulence traits, and evasion of host immunity. Transformation frequency differs greatly among pneumococcal clinical isolates, but the molecular basis and biological importance of this interstrain variability remain unclear. In this study, we characterized the transformation frequency and other associated phenotypes of 208 S. pneumoniae clinical isolates representing at least 30 serotypes. While the vast majority of these isolates (94.7%) were transformable, the transformation frequency differed by up to 5 orders of magnitude between the least and most transformable isolates. The strain-to-strain differences in transformation frequency were observed among many isolates producing the same capsule types, indicating no general association between transformation frequency and serotype. However, a statistically significant association was observed between the levels of transformation and colonization fitness/virulence in the hypertransformable isolates. Although nontransformable mutants of all the selected hypertransformable isolates were significantly attenuated in colonization fitness and virulence in mouse infection models, such mutants of the strains with relatively low transformability had no or marginal fitness phenotypes under the same experimental settings. This finding strongly suggests that the pneumococci with high transformation capability are "addicted" to a "hypertransformable" state for optimal fitness in the human host. This work has thus provided an intriguing hint for further investigation into how the competence system impacts the fitness, virulence, and other transformation-associated traits of this important human pathogen.
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