Final Activity Report Summary - P. AERUGINOSA NEW GE (Identification of new Pseudomonas aeruginosa genes involved in the pathophysiology of Cystic Fibrosis lung infection)
Muc mutations were observed with similar frequency in strains collected from two groups of CF patients each with a highly discordant course of chronic P. aeruginosa infection, suggesting that carriage of strains with muc mutations is not informative for the clinical manifestations and prognosis of CF disease. However, when the collection of P. aeruginosa strains was screened for hypermutability, hypermutable phenotypes have been repeatedly observed in high proportion of CF infected patients indicating that this mechanism may play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of bacterial lung infection. Hypermutable strains may generate adaptive variants that confer a survival advantage to P. aeruginosa during chronic lung infection. To know which genes are involved in adaptation to lung the screening of a STM-library of P. aeruginosa mutants is currently in progress.