Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important soil bacterium, with a complex metabolism capable of degrading polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and producing interesting, biologically active secondary metabolites including quinolones, rhamnolipids, lectins, hydrogen cyanide, and phenazines. Production of these products is likely controled by complex regulatory networks making Pseudomonas aeruginosa adaptable both to free-living and pathogenic lifestyles. In addition to being able to colonize a wide variety of environments, Pesudomonas aeruginosa is also a pathogen with a wide host range. PA14, a clinical isolate from a human burn patient, has been demonstrated to cause pathogenesis in such diverse hosts as humans, mice, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, and Arabidopsis thaliana. PA14 is also an excellent model for the study of pathogenesis and biofilm formation. Comparison of PA14 with a less pathogenic previously sequenced P.aeruginosa strain (PAO1; PSEAE) showed that genes that are present in PA14 but absent in PAO1 do not correlate with the virulence of these strains. The authors suggest that virulence in P.aeruginoas is the result of the combination of pathogenicity-related genes that interact in different fashions depending on the genetic background (adapted from http://ausubellab.mgh.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/pa14/annotation/start.cgi). (EBI Integr8)