Effect of benzimidazole derivative C162 on Staphylococcus aureus virulence

From a Caenorhabditis elegans - S. aureus anti-infective screen, we identified benzimidazole derivative C162 as one of the potential anti-infective candidate that rescued the infected-nematodes from infection. This compound was found to exhibit anti-biofilm activity against S. aureus. To investigate the transcriptome profile of S. aureus in response to benzimidazole derivative C162, a genome-wide transcriptome analysis was performed on C162-treated S. aureus using the Affymetrix GeneChip S. aureus Genome Arrays. Our main interest is to look at the expression profiles of the biofilm-associated and virulence genes. We conducted three independent microarray experiments (biological replicates) in the absence (control) and the presence (treated) of 6.25 µM benzimidazole derivative C162. We calculated the fold change as the ratio between the signal averages of three untreated and three C162-treated cultures at a single time-point (overnight incubation for 16-18 hours).