Streptococcus suis infection: An emerging/reemerging challenge of bacterial infectious diseases?

Feng, Youjun; Zhang, Huimin; Wu, Zuowei; Wang, Shihua; Cao, Min; Hu, Dan; Wang, Changjun

As a zoonotic agent, S. suis is gathering increasing accumulated attention from public health officials as well as the relevant academic community. 2, 3, 8 With respect to S. suis epidemiology, we believe that current situation of human SS2 infections should be re-evaluated using comprehensive approaches. To minimize the occupational infections by S. suis, it is suggested that advances be made to improve public awareness of S. suis infection by science education and popularization. Although progress has been obtained toward understanding S. suis pathogenicity (especially identifying a group of bacterial virulence factors), it still sounds fragmentary, and lacks an insightful dissection of integrated regulatory networks of bacterial virulence. In the future, an important direction would be to link posttranscriptional regulation (e.g., ncRNA and riboswitch) and modification (such as acetylation and de-acetylation) to the bacterial virulence of Streptococcus suis. 190 Moreover, structural information on these virulence factors is very limited ( Table 2) . We therefore believe it is necessary to strengthen the study of pathogenesis-related structural biology, which could establish a solid basis for design of small molecule drugs targeting bacterial virulence factors.