Mariana Tavares, Mariya Kozak, Alexandra Balola, Carla Patrícia Da Silva Coutinho, Cláudia P. Godinho, A. Amir Hassan, Vaughn S Cooper, Isabel Sá-Correia, “Adaptation and survival of Burkholderia cepacia and B. contaminans during long-term incubation in saline solutions containing benzalkonium chloride”, under publication in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, section Biosafety and Biosecurity. Adaptation and survival of Burkholderia cepacia and B. contaminans during long-term incubation in saline solutions containing benzalkonium chloride

In the present study, a set of epidemiologically related B. cepacia and B. contaminans isolates, recovered from contaminated saline solutions for nasal application and from sputum samples of CF patients, were used to examine the adaptation and survival of these bacteria during long-term incubation, at 23ºC in the dark, in artificially contaminated saline solutions deprived of any nutrient source and supplemented with increasing Benzalkonium choride (BZK) concentrations. Results suggested that BZK could be used as source of carbon and energy and the existence of genes encoding a metabolic pathway for BZK degradation was confirmed through genome analysis of two B. cepacia isolates from saline solutions for nasal application. The sequences are deposited herein. This work is the result of a collaboration between members of the research group of Isabel Sá-Correia: Mariana Tavares, A. Amir Hassan, Cláudia P. Godinho and Carla P. Coutinho, at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and Vaughn Cooper from the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA.