Crossing the Mucosal Barrier: A Commensal Bacterium Gives Dengue Virus a Leg-Up in the Mosquito Midgut

Commensal bacteria that colonize the midgut of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes can influence the transmission of arthropod-borne viruses. In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Wu et al. (2019) Wu P. Sun P. Nie K. Zhu Y. Shi M. Xiao X. Liu H. Liu Q. Zhao T. Chen X. et al. A gut commensal bacterium promotes mosquito permissiveness to arboviruses. Cell Host Microbe. 2019; 25 ( this issue) : 101-112 Google Scholar show that Serratia marcescens bacteria secrete enhancin proteins that cleave membrane-bound mucins, thereby facilitating dengue virus infection of midgut epithelial cells