The most detailed study to date on the mechanisms by which a common type of bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus, adapts to living on the human body could help improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of certain infections. 

The research, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge, the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia (IBV) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and their collaborators, involved using the genomes of thousands of S. aureus isolates cultured from the human nose and on the skin to investigate which genes are important for the bacteria to adapt and persist.

Published today (13 January) in Nature Communications, they used a new approach of analysing the  genomes of bacteria from human carriers, to highlight exactly how these bacteria adapt in their natural habitat. This revealed key mutations that enable certain strains to evade the human immune system and become resistant to antibiotics.