S. pneumoniae is a Gram-positive bacterium frequently carried asymptomatically in the human nasopharynx. However, in a proportion of cases, it can spread to other sites of the body, causing life-threatening diseases that translate into massive global morbidity and mortality. Our data show that AI-2 signaling via FruA promotes the transition of the pneumococcus from colonization to invasion by facilitating the utilization of galactose, the principal sugar available in the upper respiratory tract. AI-2-mediated upregulation of Leloir pathway enzymes results in increased production of capsular polysaccharide and hypervirulence in a murine intranasal challenge model. This identifies the highly conserved FruA phosphotransferase system as a target for new antimicrobials based on the disruption of this generic quorum-sensing system.
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Trappetti et al. (2017) studied this question.