Fig. 3: Testosterone stimulates S. aureus quorum sensing independently of the AIPs.
From: Skin androgens regulate Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity via quorum sensing
a–c, S. aureus biosynthetic mutant (HG003-ΔagrBD) and its respective agr-P3 bioluminescent reporter strain (ΔagrBDagr-P3::lux) were treated with 10 nM testosterone, AIP-I or untreated. a, agr-induced bioluminescence of agr-P3::lux was recorded every hour using a plate reader (n = 12). Statistics of testosterone and AIP-I compared with the vehicle. Means ± s.e.m. (error bars) are plotted. #P < 0.0001 by 2-way ANOVA compared with vehicle. b, Percentage of bacterially induced haemolysis and skin cell cytotoxicity (n = 3 replicates of RBCs from a single donor). c, qRT-PCR of psmα expression in the biosynthetic mutant strain treated with 10 nM testosterone, AIP-I and vehicle (n = 3), normalized to gyrA expression. d, qRT-PCR for psmα expression in the biosynthetic mutant strain treated with AIP-I and 10 nM or 100 nM of testosterone (n = 3). e,f, qRT-PCR for psmα expression in the biosynthetic mutant strain treated with AIP-II (e) or AIP-III (f) alone or in combination with increasing concentrations of testosterone (10 nM to 10 µM) (n = 3). b–f, Means ± s.e.m. (error bars) are plotted. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001 by 1-way ANOVA. g,h, Male Hsd3b6fl/fl (n = 8) and Hsd3b6∆skin (n = 5 per group) mice were epicutaneously infected with 1 × 106 CFU of the biosynthetic mutant strain constitutive reporter (ΔagrBD::lux) treated topically with testosterone, AIP-I or untreated, with bioluminescence quantified over time (g) and representative bioluminescence images (h). Results are an aggregate of two experiments. Means ± s.e.m. (error bars) are plotted. #P < 0.01 by 2-way ANOVA of Hsd3b6fl/fl compared with vehicle-treated Hsd3b6∆skin mice. &P < 0.01 by 2-sided Mann–Whitney U-test of vehicle compared with testosterone-treated Hsd3b6∆skin mice on day 1. See Extended Data Fig. 7a–h.
