Seeding Public Goods Is Essential for Maintaining Cooperation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Frontiers in Microbiology

Daniel Loarca¹  Rodolfo García-Contreras¹  Dánae Díaz¹  Ana María Fernández Presas¹  Toshinari Maeda²  Thomas K. Wood³  Rafael Franco-Cendejas⁴  Abril Rebollar-Ruiz⁵  Jimena Ramírez-Peris⁶  Ana Laura Guzmán-Ortiz⁷  Héctor Quezada⁷ 

[1] Departamento de Microbiología y Parasitología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico;Department of Biological Functions Engineering, Graduate School of Life Sciences and Systems Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, Japan;Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States;División de Infectología, Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación Luis Guillermo Ibarra Ibarra, Mexico City, Mexico;Escuela Superior de Medicina, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico;Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz, Mexico City, Mexico;Laboratorio de Investigación en Inmunología y Proteómica, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico;

关键词: social cheating;    Pseudomonas aeruginosa;    public goods;    quorum sensing;    tragedy of the commons;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmicb.2019.02322

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa controls the production of costly public goods such as exoproteases. This cooperative behavior is susceptible to social cheating by mutants that do not invest in the exoprotease production but assimilate the amino acids and peptides derived by the hydrolysis of proteins in the extracellular media. In sequential cultures with protein as the sole carbon source, these social cheaters are readily selected and often reach equilibrium with the exoprotease producers. Nevertheless, an excess of cheaters causes the collapse of population growth. In this work, using the reference strain PA14 and a clinical isolate from a burn patient, we demonstrate that the initial amount of public goods (exoprotease) that comes with the inoculum in each sequential culture is essential for maintaining population growth and that eliminating the exoprotease in the inoculum leads to rapid population collapse. Therefore, our results suggest that sequential washes should be combined with public good inhibitors to more effectively combat P. aeruginosa infections.

【 授权许可】

Unknown