How bacteria exploit proteins to trigger potentially lethal infections
Friday, May 2, 2014 - 13:00
in Health & Medicine
The way bacteria exploits human proteins during infections has recently become better understood, thanks to new research. Scientists studied how Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause life-threatening human infections, attach to two proteins fibronectin and fibrinogen found in human blood. The human proteins play important roles in clot formation and wound healing and the bacteria appear to exploit them during the process of infection.