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Regulation of lipopolysaccharide O antigen expression in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Department of Microbiology, University of Virginia Health System, 1300 Jefferson Park Avenue, 7230 Jordan Hall, Charlottesville, VA 22908-0734, USA.

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Email the corresponding author at enk9j@virginia.edu

Joanna B Goldberg

† Author for correspondence

Department of Microbiology, University of Virginia Health System, 1300 Jefferson Park Avenue, 7230 Jordan Hall, Charlottesville, VA 22908-0734, USA.

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Email the corresponding author at jbg2b@virginia.edu

Published Online:27 Mar 2008https://doi.org/10.2217/17460913.3.2.191

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Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium that is ubiquitously found in the environment. It is an important opportunistic pathogen in immunocompromised patients and causes life-threatening lung infections in individuals with cystic fibrosis. A prominent virulence factor for many Gram-negative bacteria, including P. aeruginosa, is lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which is an immunodominant antigen located in the outer portion of the outer membrane. P. aeruginosa produces two O antigens that are attached to lipid A + core: a B-band O antigen and an A-band O polysaccharide. The B-band O antigen-repeating unit of LPS is responsible for serotype specificity; strains lacking O antigen have been shown to be less virulent in animal models of infection. What is less well understood is how the O antigen chain length is regulated and why P. aeruginosa and some other bacteria show two preferred O antigen lengths. P. aeruginosa encodes two genes encoding O antigen chain length regulators. These genes, wzz1 and wzz2, influence the expression of the long and very long chain lengths, respectively. The long chain length appears more important for resistance to the action of sera and virulence in a mouse model of infection, while the very long chain length appears to be more sensitive to environmental stress conditions. Studies in other bacteria point to regulation at the level of transcription and complex formation as being involved in determining the O antigen chain length and may provide clues to the regulation in P. aeruginosa.

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Published online 27 March 2008

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Acknowledgments

We apologize to our colleagues whose work was not cited due to space limitations.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01-AI50230 and R21-AI53842 to JBG). EK was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health through the University of Virginia Infectious Diseases Training Grant AI07406. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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