Simple sequence repeats and mucoid conversion: biased mucA mutagenesis in mismatch repair-deficient Pseudomonas aeruginosa

MOYANO AJ; SMANIA AM

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Año: 2009 vol. 4 p. 8203 - 8203

n Pseudomonas aeruginosa, conversion to the mucoid phenotype marks the onset of an irreversible state of the infection in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients. The main pathway for mucoid conversion is mutagenesis of the mucA gene, frequently due to -1 bp deletions in a simple sequence repeat (SSR) of 5 Gs (G(5)-SSR(426)). We have recently observed that this mucA mutation is particularly accentuated in Mismatch Repair System (MRS)-deficient cells grown in vitro. Interestingly, previous reports have shown a high prevalence of hypermutable MRS-deficient strains occurring naturally in CF chronic lung infections. Here, we used mucA as a forward mutation model to systematically evaluate the role of G(5)-SSR(426) in conversion to mucoidy in a MRS-deficient background, with this being the first analysis combining SSR-dependent localized hypermutability and the acquisition of a particular virulence/persistence trait in P. aeruginosa. In this study, mucA alleles were engineered with different content