In general, coagulase-negative staphylococci were found to be relatively less susceptible to the lytic action of lysostaphin than coagulase-positive staphylococci. To achieve, arbitrarily, a lysis greater than 75%, it was necessary to use an increased concentration of enzyme or a longer incubation period than that usually required with coagulase-positive strains. For the most part, the cultures...

The increase in antibiotic resistance world-wide revitalized the interest in the use of phage lysins to combat pathogenic bacteria. In this work, we analyzed the specific cleavage sites on the staphylococcal peptidoglycan produced by three phage lytic proteins. The investigated cell wall lytic enzymes were the endolysin LysH5 derived from the S. aureus bacteriophage vB_SauS-phi-IPLA88 (phi-IPLA...

Lysostaphin sensitivity was evaluated as a rapid screening test to differentiate Staphylococcus aureus from other species of staphylococci and micrococci. A total of 168 strains of staphylococci, 108 of which were S. aureus, were cultured overnight in brain infusion broth. Gram stains were peformed before and after a 1:10 dilution of the culture was exposed to 2 micrograms of lysostaphin per ml...

OBJECTIVES Staphylococcus aureus is a notorious bacterial pathogen and antibiotic-resistant isolates complicate current treatment strategies. We characterized S. aureus VC40, a laboratory mutant that shows full resistance to glycopeptides (vancomycin and teicoplanin MICs ≥32 mg/L) and daptomycin (MIC = 4 mg/L), to gain deeper insights into the underlying resistance mechanisms. METHODS Genomic...

In the present studies we compared the ability of two commonly used assays, solid-phase radioimmunoassay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), to detect human antibodies to Staphylococcus aureus peptidoglycan. ELISA was superior, with a reproducibility of 12.0%, as compared with 18.1% in solid-phase radioimmunoassay. Much lower serum dilutions could be used in ELISA. We also studied th...