MAEA and breast cancer: Interestingly, although the stress response (betAB, ldh, proP) and metabolic genes (argF, ptpB, pepF, nadE) that are repressed by Agr are also repressed by BC, the majority of the adhesin genes normally repressed by Agr showed no change in expression (e.g. fnbA, fnbB, emp, spa; refs), suggesting that the Agr regulon is only partially affected by BC.