Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a common type of bacterium that is usually harmless to many people, but for others can cause potentially life-threatening infections. Now, a new study gives a detailed understanding of how these bacteria adapt and evolve to survive on and in their human carriers at a genetic level. The findings could help improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of certain infections.
The study, “The mutational landscape of Staphylococcus aureus during colonization,” is published in Nature Communications and led by researchers at Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge, the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia (IBV) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and their collaborators.
The international team analyzed the genomes of more than 7,000 S….