SCIENCE@home

Increased production of the extracellular polysaccharide Psl can give a growth advantage to Pseudomonas aeruginosa in low-iron conditions

Jaime B. Hutchison,Karishma S. Kaushik,Christopher A. Rodesney,Thomas Lilieholm,Layla A Bakhtiari,V. Gordon

Published 2018 in bioRxiv

ABSTRACT

In infections, biofilm formation is associated with a number of fitness advantages, such as resistance to antibiotics and to clearance by the immune system. Biofilm formation has also been linked to fitness advantages in environments other than in vivo infections; primarily, biofilms are thought to help constituent organisms evade predation and to promote intercellular signaling. The opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa forms biofilm infections in lungs, wounds, and on implants and medical devices. However, the tendency toward biofilm formation originated in this bacterium’s native environment, primarily plants and soil. Such environments are polymicrobial and often resource-limited. Other researchers have recently shown that the P. aeruginosa extracellular polysaccharide Psl can bind iron. For the lab strain PA01, Psl is also the dominant adhesive and cohesive “glue” holding together multicellular aggregates and biofilms. Here, we perform quantitative time-lapse confocal microscopy and image analysis of early biofilm growth by PA01. We find that aggregates of P. aeruginosa have a growth advantage over single cells of P. aeruginosa in the presence of Staphylococcus aureus in low-iron environments. Our results suggest the growth advantage of aggregates is linked to their high Psl content and to the production of an active factor by S. aureus. We posit that the ability of Psl to promote iron acquisition may have been linked to the evolutionary development of the strong biofilm-forming tendencies of P. aeruginosa.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2018

  • Venue

    bioRxiv

  • Publication date

    2018-06-25

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1101/355339
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-74 of 74 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-6 of 6 citing papers · Page 1 of 1