Dr. Eric Skaar from the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University, School of Medicine, gave this seminar on November 9, 2015. He talks about finding therapeutic targets for Staphylococcus aureus. He states that metals are required for infection and that bacteria encode high affinity metal acquisition systems. Heme, which is a cofactor of hemoglobin, is known to be the most abundant iron source in the vertebrate host, and is the main focus of this seminar. The first step in heme metabolism in Gram-positive pathogens occurs in an iron-regulated surface determinant (isd) system, which has a hemoglobin receptor called isdB. S. aureus preferentially binds to human hemoglobin, so they created a humanized
