Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Biology, Genetics, and Host-Pathogen Interactions

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa offers a rich variety of biologically relevant topics to explore and serves as a model system to understand the interactions of Gram-negative bacteria with human hosts. The organism adapts readily to most environments. It has a large and variable genome with a great deal of metabolic potential. P. aeruginosa encodes a variety of regulatory systems to fine tune gene expression and integrate environmental signals. This organism can infect both plants and animals and produces a plethora of enzymes and factors that can overcome host defenses. Moreover, it has the ability to change between the states of a sedentary colonizer to an invasive and highly motile organism. Clinically, the bacterium is resistant to many antibiotics making it difficult to treat and impossible to eradicate from the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis. Intrinsic antibiotic resistance combined with an armamentarium of tissue degradative enzymes makes it imperative to possess a comprehensive understanding of the biology, genetics and pathogenesis of this organism so that novel therapeutics based on virulence product neutralization can be designed and implemented. This Research Topics issue will be devoted to updating the current understanding of P. aeruginosa systems as they relate to its different lifestyles in different environments. The underlying theme is to provide broad overviews and to integrate protein structure-function and gene regulation as it relates to the biology of this bacterium.

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 1, 2010
Full Article Submission Deadline: March 1, 2011