Pseudomonas aeruginosa mutants defective in glucose uptake

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacterial pathogen involved in a variety of serious human infections. The high intrinsic resistance of this bacterium to antibiotics and its aptitude to acquire new resistances by horizontal gene transfer demands for the development of new therapeutic strategies. Epidemiological and experimental evidence links the outcome of P. aeruginosa infections to the ability of the bacterium to exploit glucose as carbon source within the host. Hence glucose uptake and metabolism appears as an interesting target for the development of anti-pseudomonas drugs. This work shows that interfering with P. aeruginosa glucose uptake has a strong impact on transcriptome and virulence in vitro and could have opposite effects in vivo, depending on the specific mutation and on the type of infection model. Overall, our results highlight that a deep knowledge of bacterial metabolism and nutritional milieu within the host is required in order to devise effective antibacterial strategies relying on the inhibition of bacterial metabolic functions.