Animal models of chronic and recurrent Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infection: significance of macrolide treatment.

Animal models of human diseases are invaluable and inevitable elements in identifying and testing novel treatments for serious diseases, including severe infections. Planning and conducting investigator-initiated human trials are generally accepted as being enormously challenging. In contrast, it is often underestimated how much planning, including background and modifying experiments, is needed to establish a relevant infectious disease animal model.

The exopolysaccharide matrix modulates the interaction between 3D architecture and virulence of a mixed-species oral biofilm.

Virulent biofilms are responsible for a range of infections, including oral diseases. All biofilms harbor a microbial-derived extracellular-matrix. The exopolysaccharides (EPS) formed on tooth-pellicle and bacterial surfaces provide binding sites for microorganisms; eventually the accumulated EPS enmeshes microbial cells.

A complex multilevel attack on Pseudomonas aeruginosa algT/U expression and algT/U activity results in the loss of alginate production.

Infection by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality seen in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. This is mainly due to the genotypic and phenotypic changes of the bacteria that cause conversion from a typical nonmucoid to a mucoid form in the CF lung. Mucoid conversion is indicative of overproduction of a capsule-like polysaccharide called alginate.

An analytical tool-box for comprehensive biochemical, structural and transcriptome evaluation of oral biofilms mediated by mutans streptococci.

Biofilms are highly dynamic, organized and structured communities of microbial cells enmeshed in an extracellular matrix of variable density and composition (1, 2). In general, biofilms develop from initial microbial attachment on a surface followed by formation of cell clusters (or microcolonies) and further development and stabilization of the microcolonies, which occur in a complex extracellular matrix. The majority of biofilm matrices harbor exopolysaccharides (EPS), and dental biofilms are no exception; especially those associated with caries disease, which are mostly mediated by mutans streptococci (3).