Challenging the paradigm: non-canonical exoprotease cheating in clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates.

ABSTRACT: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a model organism for studying social behaviors in bacteria, such as the exploitation of exoprotease by social cheaters. The current paradigm holds that continuous culture of exoprotease-producing individuals with protein as the sole carbon source selects for exoprotease non-producers mutants with an impaired quorum-sensing regulator, LasR, which controls exoprotease expression. However, recent studies reveal that some isolates lacking functional LasR still produce exoproteases under the control of another regulator, RhlR. Here, we extended this study to two clinical strains, AUS 411 and AUS 531, isolated from cystic fibrosis patients and harboring functional LasR. Surprisingly, in AUS 411, exoprotease-non-producers appeared from the first growth passage, but most

SUBMITTER: Guadarrama-Orozco KD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12574336 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature