"Fighting Nutritional Immunity: Clostridioides difficile's Ferrosome Organelles"
Researchers have discovered that the bacterium Clostridioides difficile, which causes severe gastrointestinal infections, possesses specialized organelles called ferrosomes that help it combat nutritional immunity. Nutritional immunity is a host defense mechanism that restricts the availability of essential nutrients, such as iron, to invading pathogens. The ferrosomes in C. difficile sequester iron and protect it from host proteins that would otherwise limit its availability. This finding sheds light on the strategies bacteria employ to acquire iron and survive in the host environment, and may lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches for C. difficile infections.
