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Full-Text Articles in Pathogenic Microbiology
Breaking Virulent: The Coincidental Evolution Of Virulence Factors In Bacteria., Rhiannon Emmanuelle Cecil
Breaking Virulent: The Coincidental Evolution Of Virulence Factors In Bacteria., Rhiannon Emmanuelle Cecil
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Understanding how innocuous organisms can evolve to be pathogenic to humans is of increasing global concern. Further, understanding how existing pathogens may evolved to be more virulent is also vital to our ability to provide healthcare to people afflicted with diseases that promote chronic bacterial infections, such as cystic fibrosis. With the rise of antibiotic resistance in both bacteria and fungi it is paramount that new therapeutics are identified. Understanding what mutations occur that result in increased virulence in microbes can potentially provide new targets for antimicrobial drugs to combat antibiotic resistance. The Coincidental Evolution Hypothesis is a fundamental hypothesis …
Causes And Consequences Of Lasr Mutant Selection In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Populations, Dallas L. Mould
Causes And Consequences Of Lasr Mutant Selection In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Populations, Dallas L. Mould
Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations
Change is the only constant in life, and these changes, though random in nature, can have consequences. Quorum sensing is heterogeneous in phenotype and prone to negative selection. In P. aeruginosa, the regulator LasR is frequently non-functional in phylogenetically diverse isolates. Through repeated experimental evolution and mathematical modeling, we show that differences in growth enable lasR mutant evolutionary success and this requires a system enabling metabolic choices, known as carbon catabolite repression (or catabolite repression). The differences in catabolite repression between wild type and lasR mutants enable altered metabolite preferences, and the resulting differences in metabolic states enable intraspecies …