Transcriptome analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 WT, pauA2 mutant, and pauA2 suppressor

PauA2 plays an essential role in spermine catabolism and that exogenous spermine exerts a bactericidal effect on the pauA2 mutant of P. aeruginosa. Not only subjected to growth inhibition by spermine, the pauA2 mutant without a functional -glutamylpolyamine synthetase PauA2 became more sensitive to -lactam antibiotics in human serum. To explore PauA2 as a potential target of drug development, suppressors of the pauA2 mutant were isolated from selection plates containing spermine. These suppressors share common changes in various phenotypes. Genome resequencing of a representative suppressor revealed a unique mutation at the phoU gene, and a constitutive expression of the Pho regulon as evidenced by measurements of transcriptome analysis.

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