Microbiology, molecular biology, genomics, infection, Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is a highly adaptable saprophytic bacterium that is found in a wide variety of environments. It is often isolated from soil, hospitals, the built environment, fuel storage systems, humans, animals and plants. In the veterinary setting it is associated with mastitis infections of dairy cattle whilst in humans it causes infections in individuals such as burns patients, diabetics and cystic fibrosis patients. It is capable of exploiting such diverse environments because it possesses diverse metabolic machinery encoded by a large, highly plastic genome. It is also highly adaptable, a fact that is underlined by its relatively high number of transcriptional regulators and sigma factors. For an organism that displays a high degree of inter-strain genomic variability, the diversity of the currently sequenced and annotated strains is relatively low.

As part of an international consortium we have sequenced a number of PA strains isolated from different scenarios, both environmental and clinical. The aim of this project is to identify regulatory systems in horizontally acquired genomic islands in order to determine their impact on core regulatory systems.

Bioinformatics, genomics, microbiology, molecular biology, protein biochemistry

Freschi, L., Jeukens, J., Kukavica-Ibrulj, I., Boyle, B., Dupont, M.-J., Laroche, J., et al. (2015). Clinical utilization of genomics data produced by the international Pseudomonas aeruginosa consortium. Frontiers in Microbiology, 6(150), 1036. http://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.01036

Jeukens, J., Boyle, B., Kukavica-Ibrulj, I., Ouellet, M. M., Aaron, S. D., Charette, S. J., et al. (2014). Comparative Genomics of Isolates of a Pseudomonas aeruginosa Epidemic Strain Associated with Chronic Lung Infections of Cystic Fibrosis Patients. PloS One, 9(2), e87611. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087611

Johns, B. E., Purdy, K. J., Tucker, N. P., & Maddocks, S. (2015). Phenotypic and Genotypic Characteristics of Small Colony Variants and Their Role in Chronic Infection. Microbiology Insights, 8, 15-23. http://doi.org/10.4137/MBI.S25800

Lemieux, A.-A., Jeukens, J., Kukavica-Ibrulj, I., Fothergill, J. L., Boyle, B., Laroche, J., et al. (2016). Genes Required for Free Phage Production are Essential for Pseudomonas aeruginosa Chronic Lung Infections. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 213(3), 395-402. http://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiv415

Stewart, L., Ford, A., Sangal, V., Jeukens, J., Boyle, B., Caim, S., et al. (2013). Draft genomes of twelve host adapted and environmental isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosaand their position in the core genome phylogeny. Pathogens and Disease, 71(1), 20-25. http://doi.org/10.1111/2049-632X.12107