Protease expression by microorganisms and its relevance to crucial physiological/pathological events

Figure 7 Possible functions played by microbial proteases. Surface and/or secreted proteases are able to cleave different host components such as serum proteins, antimicrobial peptides, surface molecules and structural proteinaceous compounds. The degradation of host proteins can help the microorganisms in several steps of their life cycle and pathogenesis including dissemination, adhesion, escape, nutrition and immunomodulation of the host immune response. These proteases can also contribute to maintaining basic metabolic processes in a microbial cell, which govern crucial events like proliferation, differentiation, signaling and death pathways. Proteolytic inhibitors are able to block one or several of these fundamental events.