Simple sequence repeats together with mismatch repair deficiency can bias mutagenic pathways in Pseudomonas aeruginosa during chronic lung infection

PLoS One. 2013 Nov 21;8(11):e80514. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080514. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that chronically infects the airways of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients and undergoes a process of genetic adaptation based on mutagenesis. We evaluated the role of mononucleotide G:C and A:T simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in this adaptive process. An in silico survey of the genome sequences of 7 P. aeruginosa strains showed that mononucleotide G:C SSRs but not A:T SSRs were greatly under-represented in coding regions, suggesting a strong counterselection process for G:C SSRs with lengths >5 bp but not for A:T SSRs. A meta-analysis of published whole genome sequence data for a P. aeruginosa strain from a CF patient with chronic airway infection showed that G:C SSRs but not A:T SSRs were frequently mutated during the infection process through the insertion or deletion of one or more SSR subunits. The mutation tendency of G:C SSRs was length-dependent and increased exponentially as a function of SSR length. When this strain naturally became a stable Mismatch Repair System (MRS)-deficient mutator, the degree of increase of G:C SSRs mutations (5-fold) was much higher than that of other types of mutation (2.2-fold or less). Sequence analysis of several mutated genes reported for two different collections, both containing mutator and non-mutator strains of P. aeruginosa from CF chronic infections, showed that the proportion of G:C SSR mutations was significantly higher in mutators than in non-mutators, whereas no such difference was observed for A:T SSR mutations. Our findings, taken together, provide genome-scale evidences that under a MRS-deficient background, long G:C SSRs are able to stochastically bias mutagenic pathways by making the genes in which they are harbored more prone to mutation. The combination of MRS deficiency and virulence-related genes that contain long G:C SSRs is therefore a matter of concern in P. aeruginosa CF chronic infection.

MeSH terms

  • Base Pair Mismatch*
  • Chronic Disease
  • DNA Repair*
  • Genome, Bacterial
  • Humans
  • Lung Diseases / microbiology*
  • Mutation*
  • Pseudomonas aeruginosa / genetics
  • Pseudomonas aeruginosa / pathogenicity*
  • Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCYT) Grant PICT-2012–2088 (http://www.agencia.gov.ar), and Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica (SECYT-UNC) Grant 05/C532 (http://www.secyt.unc.edu.ar). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.