The Genetic Basis for Biofilm Formation of Pseudomonas Stutzeri

Abstract

Pseudomonas stutzeri is evaluated in this thesis for its ability to form a coral, corrugated biofilm. It begins with an overview of biofilm formation in other species, then offers a more concentrated view on the pseudomonad group, to give context for this topic. The three experiments performed were a nitrate experiment to test if a lack of access to nitrate influenced the coral biofilm formation, a passage experiment to show how colony morphology changed in pellicle formation in liquid media over time, and a transposon mutagenesis experiment to insert a transposon into the gene(s) involved in coral biofilm formation to knockout the ability. The nitrate experiment showed no difference between colony morphology on plates with and without nitrate added. The passage experiment showed coral biofilm formation ability being lost in some colonies as early as one week after inoculation and a great diversity of morphologic characteristics appeared over time. Pellicle formation also lost robustness over time with some colonies becoming more motile and other hyper-biofilm forming. The transposon mutagenesis experiment did not come to completion due to colonies losing coral biofilm formation ability on their own without necessarily being caused by the transposon. Sequence data is still currently being processed.