Department of Ship Sanitation, Army Key Laboratory of Hyperbaric and Diving Physiology, The Institution of Naval Medicine, 880 Xiangyin Road, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
Can J Microbiol. 2012 Feb;58(2):158-69. doi: 10.1139/w11-121. Epub 2012 Jan 26.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important opportunistic pathogen associated with multiple diseases including cystic fibrosis and nosocomial infections. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is also the microbe most often isolated from ear and skin infections in divers. Saturation divers often suffer from various skin and mucous disorders, of which P. aeruginosa infections are the most serious and frequent. Previous studies mainly focused on adaptive and regulatory mechanisms of P. aeruginosa virulence in inducing clinical acute and chronic infections under different environmental conditions. However, there are few studies describing the physiological adaptive and regulatory mechanisms of P. aeruginosa in inducing high infectivity in healthy divers under hyperbaric oxyhelium conditions and even fewer studies describing the overall influence of the hyperbaric oxyhelium environment on regulating mRNA and protein expression levels of P. aeruginosa. The present study used transcriptomic and virulence phenotype analysis to identify factors that allow P. aeruginosa to become established in a hyperbaric oxyhelium environment to facilitate infections in divers. Transcriptional profiling of P. aeruginosa grown under steady-state hyperbaric oxyhelium stress conditions showed an upregulation of genes associated with stress-sense/response, protein folding, transcriptional regulation, pili and flagellum metabolism, virulence adaptation, and membrane protein metabolism. Some of these genes (including several two-component systems not previously known to be influenced by hyperbaric oxyhelium) were differentially expressed by P. aeruginosa in response to 72 h of exposure to hyperbaric oxyhelium stress. Detection of the virulence phenotype confirmed the results of cDNA microarrays. Based on these results, we conclude that hyperbaric oxyhelium conditions affect PAO1 gene expression and upregulate the expression of most virulence genes. The data obtained in our study may provide new insight into the molecular mechanism of hyperbaric oxyhelium exposure against P. aeruginosa virulence adaptation.
铜绿假单胞菌是一种重要的机会致病菌，与多种疾病有关，包括囊性纤维化和医院感染。铜绿假单胞菌也是潜水员耳部和皮肤感染中最常分离到的微生物。饱和潜水员经常患有各种皮肤和粘膜疾病，其中铜绿假单胞菌感染最为严重和频繁。以前的研究主要集中在铜绿假单胞菌毒力在不同环境条件下诱导临床急性和慢性感染的适应性和调节机制。然而，描述铜绿假单胞菌在高压氧氦环境下诱导健康潜水员高感染性的生理适应性和调节机制的研究较少，甚至描述高压氧氦环境对铜绿假单胞菌 mRNA 和蛋白质表达水平整体影响的研究也较少。本研究使用转录组学和毒力表型分析来鉴定使铜绿假单胞菌在高压氧氦环境中定植的因素，以促进潜水员感染。在稳定的高压氧氦应激条件下生长的铜绿假单胞菌的转录谱分析显示，与应激感应/反应、蛋白质折叠、转录调节、菌毛和鞭毛代谢、毒力适应和膜蛋白代谢相关的基因上调。这些基因中的一些（包括几个以前未知受高压氧氦影响的双组分系统）在铜绿假单胞菌暴露于高压氧氦应激 72 小时后表达不同。毒力表型的检测证实了 cDNA 微阵列的结果。基于这些结果，我们得出结论，高压氧氦条件影响 PAO1 基因表达并上调大多数毒力基因的表达。我们研究中获得的数据可能为高压氧氦暴露对铜绿假单胞菌毒力适应的分子机制提供新的见解。
