Characterization of the virulome of Staphylococcus aureus by a highly multiplex approach with Scout-MRM

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains is seriously threatening human life, as recently underlined by the World Health Organization. The case of Staphylococcus aureus, S.a. is of particular concern, whose forms resisting to vancomycin or methicillin caused numerous patients death in Hospitals. It is also crucial to better understand how mutations of the bacterial genome induce the emergence of new resistant strains. The sensitivity and multiplexing possibilities of mass spectrometric (MS) approaches appears particularly relevant to tackle such problems. We thus developed a targeted assay covering 90 key proteins involved in S.a. virulence and antibiotic resistance using a novel and a highly multiplexed targeted-MS approach, Scout-MRM. The virulome assay has been implemented for deciphering the proteogenomic links across a clinical collection of 230 S.a. strains.