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Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027 is a non-virulent strain suitable for mono-rhamnolipids production

  • Applied genetics and molecular biotechnology
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Abstract

Rhamnolipids produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa are biosurfactants with a high biotechnological potential, but their extensive commercialization is limited by the potential virulence of P. aeruginosa and by restrictions in producing these surfactants in heterologous hosts. In this work, we report the characterization of P. aeruginosa strain ATCC 9027 in terms of its genome-sequence, virulence, antibiotic resistance, and its ability to produce mono-rhamnolipids when carrying plasmids with different cloned genes from the type strain PAO1. The genes that were expressed from the plasmids are those coding for enzymes involved in the synthesis of this biosurfactant (rhlA and rhlB), as well as the gene that codes for the RhlR transcriptional regulator. We confirm that strain ATCC 9027 forms part of the PA7 clade, but contrary to strain PA7, it is sensitive to antibiotics and is completely avirulent in a mouse model. We also report that strain ATCC 9027 mono-rhamnolipid synthesis is limited by the expression of the rhlAB-R operon. Thus, this strain carrying the rhlAB-R operon produces similar rhamnolipids levels as PAO1 strain. We determined that strain ATCC 9027 with rhlAB-R operon was not virulent to mice. These results show that strain ATCC 9027, expressing PAO1 rhlAB-R operon, has a high biotechnological potential for industrial mono-rhamnolipid production.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support in providing the radioactive material and the use of laboratory facilities of Guadalupe Espín of the Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología Molecular y Biotecnología, Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Apartado Postal 70228, 04510, México, DF, Mexico

    María-Victoria Grosso-Becerra, Abigail González-Valdez, María-Jessica Granados-Martínez, Estefanía Morales, Luis Servín-González, Miguel Cocotl-Yañez & Gloria Soberón-Chávez

  2. Departamento de Microbiología y Parasitología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510, México, DF, Mexico

    José-Luis Méndez, Gabriela Delgado & Rosario Morales-Espinosa

  3. Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510, México, DF, Mexico

    Gabriel-Yaxal Ponce-Soto

Authors
  1. María-Victoria Grosso-Becerra
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  2. Abigail González-Valdez
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  3. María-Jessica Granados-Martínez
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  5. Luis Servín-González
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  6. José-Luis Méndez
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  8. Rosario Morales-Espinosa
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  9. Gabriel-Yaxal Ponce-Soto
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  10. Miguel Cocotl-Yañez
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  11. Gloria Soberón-Chávez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gloria Soberón-Chávez.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by grant PAPIIT IN200416 (DGAPA-UNAM) and from a grant from Fundación Miguel Alemán for the project “Análisis genómico de cepas de Pseudomonas aeruginosa que presentan una respuesta de detección de quórum atípica.”

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. In particular, all mouse studies were conducted in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (Committee for the Update of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, Washington, DC, 2011) and the Comité para el Cuidado y Uso de Animales de Laboratorio (CCUAL) and were approved by the ethics committee of Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas—UNAM (approval No. ID201 09/02-2010).

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Grosso-Becerra, MV., González-Valdez, A., Granados-Martínez, MJ. et al. Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027 is a non-virulent strain suitable for mono-rhamnolipids production. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 9995–10004 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7789-9

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