Genome Diversity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Jens Klockgether, Dieco Würdemann, Lutz Wiehlmann, Tim T. Binnewies, David W. Ussery and Burkhard Tümmler
from: Pseudomonas: Genomics and Molecular Biology (Edited by: Pierre Cornelis). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2008)
Abstract
The G+C rich Pseudomonas aeruginosa chromosome consists of a conserved core and a variable accessory part. The core genomes of P. aeruginosa strains are largely collinear, exhibit a low rate of sequence polymorphism and contain few loci of high sequence diversity, notably the pyoverdine locus, the flagellar regulon, pilA and the O-antigen biosynthesis locus. Variable segments are scattered throughout the genome of which about one third are immediately adjacent to tRNA or tmRNA genes. The three known hot spots of genomic diversity are caused by the integration of genomic islands of the pKLC102 / PAGI-2 family into tRNALys or tRNAGly genes. The individual islands differ in their repertoire of metabolic genes, but share a set of syntenic genes that confer their horizontal spread to other clones and species. Colonization of atypical disease habitats predisposes to deletions, genome rearrangements and accumulation of loss-of-function mutations in the P. aeruginosa chromosome. The P. aeruginosa population is characterized by a few dominant clones widespread in disease and environmental habitats. The genome is made up of clone-typical segments in core and accessory genome and of blocks in the core genome with unrestricted gene flow in the population read more ...
