Refined analyses suggest that recombination is a minor source of genomic diversity in Pseudomonas aeruginosa chronic cystic fibrosis infections.

ABSTRACT: Chronic bacterial airway infections in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) are often caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, typically showing high phenotypic diversity amongst co-isolates from the same sputum sample. Whilst adaptive evolution during chronic infections has been reported, the genetic mechanisms underlying the observed rapid within-population diversification are not well understood. Two recent conflicting reports described very high and low rates of homologous recombination in two closely related P. aeruginosa populations from the lungs of different chronically infected CF patients. To investigate the underlying cause of these contrasting observations, we combined the short read datasets from both studies and applied a new comparative analysis. We inferred low rates of

SUBMITTER: Williams D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5320575 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature