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Background   Staphylococcus aureus  expresses several proteases, which are thought to contribute to the virulence of this bacterium. Here we focus on aureolysin, the major thermolysin-like metalloprotease. Despite the importance of aureolysin in the physiology and pathogenesis of  S. aureus , relatively little information was so far available concerning the  aur  gene diversity and mobility within and between the major subdivisions of the  S. aureus  population. Therefore, an epidemiologically and genetically diverse collection of  S. aureus  strains was used to determine the range of aureolysin ( aur ) gene polymorphism.    Results  Sequence analyses support the conclusion that the  aur  gene occurs in two distinct types of related sequences. The  aur  gene was much more polymorphic but, at the same time, showed higher purifying selection than genes utilized for multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Gene trees constructed from  aur  and concatenated MLST genes revealed several putative assortative recombination events ( i.e . entire  aur  gene exchanges) between divergent lineages of  S. aureus . Evidence for intragenic recombination events ( i.e . exchanges of internal  aur  segments) across  aur  genes was also found. The biochemical properties and substrate specificity of the two types of aureolysin purified to homogeneity were studied, revealing minor differences in their affinity to low molecular weight synthetic substrates.    Conclusion  Although numerous nucleotide differences were identified between the  aur  alleles studied, our findings showed that a strong purifying selection is acting on the  aur  gene. Moreover, our study distinguishes between homologous exchanges of the entire  aur  gene (assortative recombination) between divergent  S. aureus  lineages and recombination events within  aur  genes.

Polymorphism, genetic exchange and intragenic recombination of the aureolysin gene among Staphylococcus aureusstrains