Enterococci are Gram‐positive, opportunistic pathogens that reside throughout the gastrointestinal tracts of most terrestrial organisms. Enterococci are resistant to many antibiotics, which makes enterococcal infections difficult to treat. Enterococci are also particularly hardy bacteria that can tolerate a variety of environmental stressors. Understanding how enterococci sense and respond to the extracellular environment to enact adaptive biological responses may identify new targets that can be exploited for development of treatments for enterococcal infections. Bacterial eukaryotic‐like serine/threonine kinases (eSTKs) and cognate phosphatases (STPs) are important signaling systems that mediate biological responses to extracellular stimuli. Some bacterial eSTKs are transmembrane proteins that contain a series of extracellular repeats of the penicillin‐binding and Ser/Thr kinase‐associated (PASTA) domain, leading to their designation as “PASTA kinases.” Enterococcal genomes encode a single PASTA kinase and its cognate phosphatase. Investigations of the enterococcal PASTA kinase revealed its importance in resistance to antibiotics and other cell wall stresses, in enterococcal colonization of the mammalian gut, clues about its mechanism of signal transduction, and its integration with other enterococcal signal transduction systems. In this review, we describe the current state of knowledge of PASTA kinase signaling in enterococci and describe important gaps that still need to be addressed to provide a better understanding of this important signaling system.

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肠球菌 PASTA 激酶：细胞包膜压力的前哨

肠球菌是革兰氏阳性的机会性病原体，存在于大多数陆生生物的胃肠道中。肠球菌对许多抗生素具有耐药性，这使得肠球菌感染难以治疗。肠球菌也是特别耐寒的细菌，可以耐受各种环境压力。了解肠球菌如何感知和响应细胞外环境以产生适应性生物反应，可以确定可用于开发肠球菌感染治疗的新靶点。细菌真核细胞样丝氨酸/苏氨酸激酶 (eSTK) 和同源磷酸酶 (STP) 是介导对细胞外刺激的生物反应的重要信号系统。一些细菌 eSTK 是跨膜蛋白，包含一系列细胞外重复青霉素结合和 S er/ T hr 激酶 -一个相关( PASTA )结构域，导致它们被命名为“PASTA 激酶” 。肠球菌基因组编码单个 PASTA 激酶及其同源磷酸酶。对肠球菌 PASTA 激酶的研究揭示了它在对抗生素和其他细胞壁压力的抵抗、在哺乳动物肠道的肠球菌定植中的重要性、关于其信号转导机制的线索，以及它与其他肠球菌信号转导系统的整合。在这篇综述中，我们描述了肠球菌中 PASTA 激酶信号传导的当前知识状态，并描述了仍然需要解决的重要差距，以更好地理解这一重要的信号系统。