AUTHOR=Liu Chao-Chin , Lin Mei-Hui 

TITLE=Hitchhiking motility of Staphylococcus aureus involves the interaction between its wall teichoic acids and lipopolysaccharide of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.1068251

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2022.1068251

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Staphylococcus aureus</italic>, which lacks pili and flagella, is nonmotile. However, it hitchhikes motile bacteria, such as <italic>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</italic>, to migrate in the environment. This study demonstrated that the hitchhiking motility of <italic>S. aureus</italic> SA113 was reduced after the <italic>tagO</italic>, which encodes an enzyme for wall teichoic acids (WTA) synthesis, was deleted. The hitchhiking motility was restored after the mutation was complemented by transforming a plasmid expressing TagO into the mutant. We also showed that adding purified lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to a culture that contains <italic>S. aureus</italic> SA113 and <italic>P. aeruginosa</italic> PAO1, reduced the movement of <italic>S. aureus</italic>, showing that WTA and LPS are involved in the hitchhiking motility of <italic>S. aureus</italic>. This study also found that <italic>P. aeruginosa</italic> promoted the movement of <italic>S. aureus</italic> in the digestive tract of <italic>Caenorhabditis elegans</italic> and in mice. In conclusion, this study reveals how <italic>S. aureus</italic> hitchhikes <italic>P. aeruginosa</italic> for translocation in an ecosystem. The results from this study improve our understanding on how a nonmotile pathogen moves in the environment and spreads in animals.</p>