Any residual soluble

ferric iron is further sequestered through high affinity binding by innate immune proteins such as lactoferrin and transferrin [2]. For many pathogenic microbes, decreasing iron availability leads to the enhanced expression of iron acquisition mechanisms and virulence factors, which frequently play direct roles in liberating iron from host sequestration factors [2–4]. A prevalent component of bacterial iron responses is the secretion selleck kinase inhibitor of siderophores. These small molecules scavenge residual ferric iron as well as transferrin-bound iron from the extracellular milieu with extremely high affinity and are actively reimported into bacterial cells via dedicated ABC-type transport systems [5, 6]. Siderophore assembly pathways fall into two broad classes: nonribosomal peptide synthesis (NRPS)

and NRPS-independent siderophore (NIS) synthesis [7, 8]. NRPS siderophores are peptidic constructs assembled in a stepwise fashion by large, heterofunctional, multidomain proteins, independently of ribosomes. NIS siderophores are formed via condensation of alternating subunits of dicarboxylic acids with diamines, amino alcohols, and alcohols by sets of synthetase enzymes. Encoded within the genome of S. aureus are two loci directing the production of NIS-type siderophores. The sfaABCD locus encodes for proteins involved in biosynthesis and secretion of staphyloferrin A, a molecule also produced by the majority of less pathogenic coagulase-negative staphylococci see more [9–12]. This metabolite is assembled from one unit of the nonproteinogenic amino acid D-ornithine and two units of citrate; the staphyloferrin A biosynthetic pathway was recently established in an elegant study [10]. The sbnABCDEFGHI operon encodes for biosynthesis and secretion of staphyloferrin B. This siderophore has been identified in S. aureus and a few species of coagulase-negative

staphylococci, and in the Gram-negative genera Ralstonia and Cupriavidus [13–16]. However, based on early studies by Haag et al. [16] and recent staphylococcal genome data, staphyloferrin B may also be produced by other coagulase-positive staphylococci other than S. aureus. Staphyloferrin B is comprised of one unit each of citric acid, 1,2-diaminoethane, fantofarone alpha-ketoglutaric acid, and the nonproteinogenic amino acid L-2,3-diaminopropionic acid (L-Dap) [15–17]. These precursors are condensed by NIS synthetase enzymes SbnC, SbnE, and SbnF, with modification of an intermediate metabolite by decarboxylase SbnH [17]. Inactivation of staphyloferrin B biosynthesis (via chromosomal deletion of a siderophore synthetase) was previously shown to reduce the virulence of S. aureus in a mouse infection model [14], which underscores the contribution of specialized iron uptake mechanisms to pathogenesis.