Bacterial metabolic remodelling by convergent evolution in response to host niche-dependent nutrient availability

Abstract

New pathogens often arise after host jump events between species. However, our understanding of how bacterial pathogens pivot to distinct nutrient availabilities in a new host niche is limited. Staphylococcus aureus is a multi-host pathogen responsible for a global burden of disease in humans and farmed animals. Multiple human-to-bovine host switching events led to the emergence of S. aureus as a leading cause of intramammary infection in dairy cattle. Here, we employed ex vivo milk infections to investigate how bovine S. aureus has adapted to the dairy niche revealing metabolic remodelling including upregulation of genes for lactose utilisation and branched-chain amino acid biosynthesis in response to nutrient availability. Notably, infection of milk by bovine S. aureus results in a milk clotting phenotype associated with enhanced bacterial growth that is dependent on the protease aureolysin. The same adaptive phenotype has evolved convergently in different bovine S. aureus lineages via mutations in distinct regulatory gene loci that promote enhanced aureolysin expression. Taken together, we have dissected a key adaptive trait for a bacterial pathogen after a host-switch event, involving metabolic remodelling in response to the availability of nutrients. These findings highlight the remarkable evolutionary plasticity of S. aureus underpinning its multi-host species tropism.