Novel Research Models for Staphylococcus aureus Small Colony Variants (SCV) Development: Co-pathogenesis and Growth Rate

James Lee; Peter S Zilm; Stephen P Kidd

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.00321

Novel Research Models for Staphylococcus aureus Small Colony Variants (SCV) Development: Co-pathogenesis and Growth Rate

Front Microbiol. 2020 Feb 28:11:321. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.00321. eCollection 2020.

Authors

James Lee^{1

2

3}, Peter S Zilm⁴, Stephen P Kidd^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular and Biomedical Science, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
² Research Centre for Infectious Diseases, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
³ Australian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Ecology, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
⁴ Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.

Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus remains a great burden on the healthcare system. Despite prescribed treatments often seemingly to be successful, S. aureus can survive and cause a relapsing infection which cannot be cleared. These infections are in part due to quasi-dormant sub-population which is tolerant to antibiotics and able to evade the host immune response. These include Small Colony Variants (SCVs). Because SCVs readily revert to non-SCV cell types under laboratory conditions, the characterization of SCVs has been problematic. This mini-review covers the phenotypic and genetic changes in stable SCVs including the selection of SCVs by and interactions with other bacterial species.

Keywords: Staphylococcus aureus; co-colonization; continuous culture; prolonged growth; small colony variants.

Publication types

Review