Introduction

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a rod shaped Gram-negative obligate aerobe belonging to the family Pseudomonadaceae. P. aeruginosa is capable of growing in a wide variety of differing niches and growth often occurs in moist environments which explains its associations with soil and water. It can also be isolated from plants and animals especially from moist sites such as the ear. As most human P. aeruginosa infections are nosocomial in nature, hospital reservoirs of growth are many and include respiratory equipment, solutions, medicines, disinfectants, sinks, mops, food mixers and vegetables. Recently, the complete genome sequence of the P. aeruginosa strain PAO1 was published (Stover et al., 2000), which suggested that the genetic complexity of P. aeruginosa approaches that of simple eukaryotic organisms with a genome size of 6.3 million base pairs. It is perhaps this complexity which allows the ecological versatility seen in this organism.

Visit the Pseudomonas genome project website

Quorum sensing in P. aeruginosa

Researchers:

Paul Williams, Miguel Cámara, Stephan Heeb, Matthew Fletcher, Jean Dubern, Giordano Rampioni, Karima Righetti, Emanuela Frangipani.

Post-graduate students:

Robyn Bates, Josie McKeown, Sabrina Chen, Steve Higgins, Eliza Soh, Marco Garavaglia