Figures
Flagellar mutants of the opportunistic bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa display nutrition-dependent rugose colony morphology.
Pictured is Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain AMT0113-12, an isolate from the sputum of a cystic fibrosis (CF) patient with chronic lung infection. This strain expresses a rugose colony phenotype on Vogel-Bonner Minimal Medium-based agar (shown here) that is not expressed on widely used lysogeny broth agar. This observation led to the discovery that flagellar mutations are linked to a similar gain-of-function (exopolysaccharide-overproducing) phenotype. While it has been assumed that a primary benefit from loss of motility is that the host immune system fails to target a bacterium lacking a flagellum, this observation suggests that exopolysaccharide-overproduction by flagellar mutants may also have fitness benefits in chronic infections and biofilms. See Harrison et al.
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Image Credit: Joe J. Harrison and Matthew R. Parsek.
Citation: (2020) PLoS Genetics Issue Image | Vol. 16(6) July 2020. PLoS Genet 16(6): ev16.i06. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pgen.v16.i06
Published: July 2, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Pictured is Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain AMT0113-12, an isolate from the sputum of a cystic fibrosis (CF) patient with chronic lung infection. This strain expresses a rugose colony phenotype on Vogel-Bonner Minimal Medium-based agar (shown here) that is not expressed on widely used lysogeny broth agar. This observation led to the discovery that flagellar mutations are linked to a similar gain-of-function (exopolysaccharide-overproducing) phenotype. While it has been assumed that a primary benefit from loss of motility is that the host immune system fails to target a bacterium lacking a flagellum, this observation suggests that exopolysaccharide-overproduction by flagellar mutants may also have fitness benefits in chronic infections and biofilms. See Harrison et al.
Download June's cover page.
Image Credit: Joe J. Harrison and Matthew R. Parsek.