“Just a spoonful of sugar...”: import of sialic acid across bacterial cell membranes

Rachel A. North, Christopher R. Horne, James S. Davies, Daniela M. Remus, Andrew C. Muscroft-Taylor, Parveen Goyal, Weixiao Yuan Wahlgren, S. Ramaswamy, Rosmarie Friemann, Renwick C. J. Dobson

Eukaryotic cell surfaces are decorated with a complex array of glycoconjugates that are usually capped with sialic acids, a large family of over 50 structurally distinct nine-carbon amino sugars, the most common member of which is N-acetylneuraminic acid. Once made available through the action of neuraminidases, bacterial pathogens and commensals utilise host-derived sialic acid by degrading it for energy or repurposing the sialic acid onto their own cell surface to camouflage the bacterium from the immune system. A functional sialic acid transporter has been shown to be essential for the uptake of sialic acid in a range of human bacterial pathogens and important for host colonisation and persistence. Here, we review the state-of-play in the field with respect to the molecular mechanisms by which these bio-nanomachines transport sialic acids across bacterial cell membranes.