Adaptation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to Phage PaP1 Predation via O-Antigen Polymerase Mutation

Two anthranilate synthase gene pairs have been identified in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They were cloned, sequenced, inactivated in vitro by insertion of an antibiotic resistance gene, and returned to P. aeruginosa, replacing the wild-type gene. One anthranilate synthase enzyme participates in tryptophan synthesis; its genes are designated trpE and trpG. The other anthranilate synthase enzyme, encoded by phnA and phnB, participates in the synthesis of pyocyanin, the characteristic phenazine pigment of the organism. trpE and trpG are independently transcribed; homologous genes have been cloned from Pseudomonas putida. The phenazine pathway genes phnA and phnB are cotranscribed. The cloned phnA phnB gene pair complements trpE and trpE(G) mutants of Escherichia coli. Homologous genes were not found in P. putida PPG1, a non-phenazine producer. Surprisingly, PhnA and PhnB are more closely related to E. coli TrpE and TrpG than to Pseudomonas TrpE and TrpG, whereas Pseudomonas TrpE and TrpG are more closely related to E. coli PabB and PabA than to E. coli TrpE and TrpG. We replaced the wild-type trpE on the P. aeruginosa chromosome with a mutant form having a considerable portion of its coding sequence deleted and replaced by a tetracycline resistance gene cassette. This resulted in tryptophan auxotrophy; however, spontaneous tryptophan-independent revertants appeared at a frequency of 10(-5) to 10(6). The anthranilate synthase of these revertants is not feedback inhibited by tryptophan, suggesting that it arises from PhnAB. phnA mutants retain a low level of pyocyanin production. Introduction of an inactivated trpE gene into a phnA mutant abolished residual pyocyanin production, suggesting that the trpE trpG gene products are capable of providing some anthranilate for pyocyanin synthesis.

Increasing prevalence and severity of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections has necessitated novel antibacterial strategies. Ideally, new approaches would target bacterial pathogens while exerting selection for reduced pathogenesis when these bacteria inevitably evolve resistance to therapeutic intervention. As an example of such a management strategy, we isolated a lytic bacteriophage, OMKO1, (family Myoviridae) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa that utilizes the outer membrane porin M (OprM) of the multidrug efflux systems MexAB and MexXY as a receptor-binding site. Results show that phage selection produces an evolutionary trade-off in MDR P. aeruginosa, whereby the evolution of bacterial resistance to phage attack changes the efflux pump mechanism, causing increased sensitivity to drugs from several antibiotic classes. Although modern phage therapy is still in its infancy, we conclude that phages, such as OMKO1, represent a new approach to phage therapy where bacteriophages exert selection for MDR bacteria to become increasingly sensitive to traditional antibiotics. This approach, using phages as targeted antibacterials, could extend the lifetime of our current antibiotics and potentially reduce the incidence of antibiotic resistant infections.

Defining the essential genome of bacterial pathogens is central to developing an understanding of the biological processes controlling disease. This has proven elusive for Pseudomonas aeruginosa during chronic infection of the cystic fibrosis (CF) lung. In this paper, using a Monte Carlo simulation-based method to analyze high-throughput transposon sequencing data, we establish the P. aeruginosa essential genome with statistical precision in laboratory media and CF sputum. Reconstruction of the global requirements for growth in CF sputum compared with defined growth conditions shows that the latter requires several cofactors including biotin, riboflavin, and pantothenate. Comparison of P. aeruginosa strains PAO1 and PA14 demonstrates that essential genes are primarily restricted to the core genome; however, some orthologous genes in these strains exhibit differential essentiality. These results indicate that genes with similar molecular functions may have distinct genetic roles in different P. aeruginosa strains during growth in CF sputum. We also show that growth in a defined growth medium developed to mimic CF sputum yielded virtually identical fitness requirements to CF sputum, providing support for this medium as a relevant in vitro model for CF microbiology studies.