NIH R01 · 2025
Importance of Post-translational modifications in Streptococcus mutans pathophysiology
Abstract Dental caries affects 2.5 billion people worldwide. Streptococcus mutans is an important pathogen in dental caries due to its biofilm lifestyle, and acidogenic and aciduric nature. In addition, expression of the collagen binding protein Cnm, present in 20% of the strains, by S. mutans is intimately associated with severe caries, systemic infections and auto-immune disorders. Our mass-spectrometry studies have demonstrated that the threonine-rich repeat (TRR) domain of S. mutans Cnm, with >70 threonine residues, undergoes extensive O- glycosylation with N-acetylhexosamines (HexNAc2). We also found that cnm is co-transcribed with a downstream gene encoding a putative GT-A type…
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