TY - JOUR
T1 - Adherence and motility characteristics of clinical Acinetobacter baumannii isolates
AU - Eijkelkamp, Bart
AU - Stroeher, Uwe
AU - Hassan, Karl
AU - Papadimitrious, Michael
AU - Paulsen, Ian
AU - Brown, Melissa
PY - 2011/10
Y1 - 2011/10
N2 - Acinetobacter baumannii continues to be a major health problem especially in hospital settings. Herein, features that may play a role in persistence and disease potential were investigated in a collection of clinical A. baumannii strains from Australia. Twitching motility was found to be a common trait in A. baumannii international clone I strains and in abundant biofilm formers, whereas swarming motility was only observed in isolates not classified within the international clone lineages. Bioinformatic analysis of the type IV fimbriae revealed a correlation between PilA sequence homology and motility. A high level of variability in adherence to both abiotic surfaces and epithelial cells was found. We report for the first time the motility characteristics of a large number of A. baumannii isolates and present a direct comparison of A. baumannii binding to nasopharyngeal and lung epithelial cells.
AB - Acinetobacter baumannii continues to be a major health problem especially in hospital settings. Herein, features that may play a role in persistence and disease potential were investigated in a collection of clinical A. baumannii strains from Australia. Twitching motility was found to be a common trait in A. baumannii international clone I strains and in abundant biofilm formers, whereas swarming motility was only observed in isolates not classified within the international clone lineages. Bioinformatic analysis of the type IV fimbriae revealed a correlation between PilA sequence homology and motility. A high level of variability in adherence to both abiotic surfaces and epithelial cells was found. We report for the first time the motility characteristics of a large number of A. baumannii isolates and present a direct comparison of A. baumannii binding to nasopharyngeal and lung epithelial cells.
KW - Australian clinical strains
KW - Biofilm formation
KW - Eukaryotic cell adherence
KW - Swarming
KW - Twitching
KW - Type IV pili
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052744647&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1574-6968.2011.02362.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1574-6968.2011.02362.x
M3 - Article
SN - 0378-1097
VL - 323
SP - 44
EP - 51
JO - FEMS Microbiology Letters
JF - FEMS Microbiology Letters
IS - 1
ER -