• Question: What is the difference between Staphyloccus aureus bacteria sampled from a healthy person and a sick person

    Asked by anood1 to Jane on 7 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Jane Charlesworth

      Jane Charlesworth answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      Great question! Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to that yet.

      We hope to find that the bacteria from sick people have some genes that the ones from healthy people do not (or the other way round). That would be our dream result, because then we could pass those genes onto a team of people who are trying develop vaccines against Staph aureus. What’s more likely is that there are small changes in a lot of genes in the bacteria that add up to allow them to make people sick. Those would be harder for us to detect, but we’re working on it!

      Another possibility is that the bacteria only make people sick because something changes in the person–for example their immune system doesn’t work as well or they get cancer or an IV in the hospital.

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