Respiratory System Commons^™

In Vitro Analysis Of Tobramycin-Treated Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Biofilms On Cystic Fibrosis-Derived Airway Epithelial Cells, Gregory G. Anderson, Sophie Moreau-Marquis, Bruce A. Stanton, George A. O'Toole

Dartmouth Scholarship

P. aeruginosa forms biofilms in the lungs of individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF); however, there have been no effective model systems for studying biofilm formation in the CF lung. We have developed a tissue culture system for growth of P. aeruginosa biofilms on CF-derived human airway cells that promotes the formation of highly antibiotic-resistant microcolonies, which produce an extracellular polysaccharide matrix and require the known abiotic biofilm formation genes flgK and pilB. Treatment of P. aeruginosa biofilms with tobramycin reduced the virulence of the biofilms both by reducing bacterial numbers and by altering virulence gene expression. We performed microarray analysis …