Metal piracy by Neisseria gonorrhoeae to overcome human nutritional immunity
Ian K. Liyayi, Amy L. Forehand, Jocelyn C. Ray, Alison K. Criss
Abstract
The bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea. N. gonorrhoeae is an obligate human pathogen that colonizes mucosal surfaces of the urogenital tract, pharynx, rectum, and conjunctiva, where it stimulates robust neutrophil recruitment. Successful infection requires N. gonorrhoeae to overcome nutritional immunity, the process by which hosts starve microbes of essential metals such as iron and zinc. N. gonorrhoeae has unique ways to subvert nutritional immunity, particularly by producing transporters that bind and extract metals from human metal-sequestering proteins. Because of the importance of metal acquisition to N. gonorrhoeae colonization and infection, its metal acquisition systems are potential targets for vaccines and therapeutics to combat the rise in antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea Here, we review the nutritional immunity challenges faced by N. gonorrhoeae with a particular focus on iron and zinc, how N. gonorrhoeae overcomes nutritional immunity for successful infection, and open questions for future investigation. Due to space constraints, we are not including work from other microbial systems in which nutritional immunity has been investigated; we direct the reader to recent reviews on this topic, as well as a more comprehensive review on metal homeostasis in pathogenic Neisseria [2-4].