Lipids fuel bacterial growth

This proposed hypothesis asks whether restoring skin fats fuels bacterial growth and deeper injury. In a human skin model with immune cells that defend tissue, researchers would match water loss, hydration, acidity, salt concentration and initial burden of Staphylococcus aureus, a skin bacterium. They would test strains able or unable to use external fatty acids, fat building blocks. The hypothesis predicts that restored fats would enter bacterial phospholipids, membrane molecules, and increase viable bacterial growth and later deeper skin damage only when fatty-acid use is intact. Tracking labelled fatty acids and mapping damage would distinguish it from a salt-condition explanation: normalized salt conditions would first restore the skin's bacteria-killing activity.