In 2013, there was an outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcusaureus (MRSA) at an NFL training facility. One player suffereda career-ending infection to his foot and sued the team owners for $20 million for unsanitary conditions that contributed to the bacterialinfection. A settlement with undisclosed terms was reached in2017. MRSA is highly contagious and is spread by direct skin contactor by airborne transmission and can result in amputation or death.In addition, MRSA is very difficult to treat because it is resistant tomany antibiotics. For example, b -lactam antibiotics, such as penicillin,function by binding to and inactivating bacterial penicillin-bindingproteins (PBPs), which synthesize the bacterial cell wall. However,MRSA expresses an alternative type of PBP, called PBP2a encodedby the mecA gene. b -lactam antibiotics only weakly bind PBP2a,and thus cell wall synthesis can continue in their presence. Moreover,in a system somewhat analogous to the regulation of the lacoperon, mecA is induced by the presence of b -lactam antibiotics andrepressed in their absence. This “on-demand” expression of mecA means that when the infection is treated with antibiotics, the cellsramp up their resistance. Question: Speculate on how mecA expression is inducible and repressiblebased on what you know about the lac operon ?
In 2013, there was an outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA) at an NFL training facility. One player suffered
a career-ending infection to his foot and sued the team owners for $20 million for unsanitary conditions that contributed to the bacterial
infection. A settlement with undisclosed terms was reached in
2017. MRSA is highly contagious and is spread by direct skin contact
or by airborne transmission and can result in amputation or death.
In addition, MRSA is very difficult to treat because it is resistant to
many antibiotics. For example, b -lactam antibiotics, such as penicillin,
function by binding to and inactivating bacterial penicillin-binding
proteins (PBPs), which synthesize the bacterial cell wall. However,
MRSA expresses an alternative type of PBP, called PBP2a encoded
by the mecA gene. b -lactam antibiotics only weakly bind PBP2a,
and thus cell wall synthesis can continue in their presence. Moreover,
in a system somewhat analogous to the regulation of the lac
operon, mecA is induced by the presence of b -lactam antibiotics and
repressed in their absence. This “on-demand” expression of mecA means that when the infection is treated with antibiotics, the cells
ramp up their resistance.
Question: Speculate on how mecA expression is inducible and repressible
based on what you know about the lac operon ?
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