The type III secretion system (T3SS) is a clinically important virulence mechanism in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that secretes and translocates effector toxins into host cells, impeding the host's rapid innate immune response to infection. Inhibitors of T3SS may be useful as prophylactic or adjunctive therapeutic agents to augment the activity of antibiotics in P. aeruginosa infections, such as pneumonia and bacteremia. One such inhibitor, the phenoxyacetamide MBX 1641, exhibits very responsive structureactivity relationships, including striking stereoselectivity, in its inhibition of P. aeruginosa T3SS. These features suggest interaction with a specific, but unknown, protein target. Here, we identify the apparent molecular target by isolating inhibitor-resistant mutants and mapping the mutation sites by deep sequencing. Selection and sequencing of four independent mutants resistant to the phenoxyacetamide inhibitor MBX 2359 identified the T3SS gene pscF, encoding the needle apparatus, as the only locus of mutations common to all four strains. Transfer of the wild-type and mutated alleles of pscF, together with its chaperone and cochaperone genes pscE and pscG, to a ⌬pscF P. aeruginosa strain demonstrated that each of the single-codon mutations in pscF is necessary and sufficient to provide secretion and translocation that is resistant to a variety of phenoxyacetamide inhibitor analogs but not to T3SS inhibitors with different chemical scaffolds. These results implicate the PscF needle protein as an apparent new molecular target for T3SS inhibitor discovery and suggest that three other chemically distinct T3SS inhibitors interact with one or more different targets or a different region of PscF.

Hospital-acquired pneumonia is associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality, and dissemination to the bloodstream is a recognized risk factor for particularly poor outcomes. Yet the mechanism by which bacteria in the lungs gain access to the bloodstream remains poorly understood. In this study, we used a mouse model of Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia to examine this mechanism. P. aeruginosa uses a type III secretion system to deliver effector proteins such as ExoS directly into the cytosol of eukaryotic cells. ExoS, a bi-functional GTPase activating protein (GAP) and ADP-ribosyltransferase (ADPRT), inhibits phagocytosis during pneumonia but has also been linked to a higher incidence of dissemination to the bloodstream. We used a novel imaging methodology to identify ExoS intoxicated cells during pneumonia and found that ExoS is injected into not only leukocytes but also epithelial cells. Phagocytic cells, primarily neutrophils, were targeted for injection with ExoS early during infection, but type I pneumocytes became increasingly injected at later time points. Interestingly, injection of these pneumocytes did not occur randomly but rather in discrete regions, which we designate ““fields of cell injection” (FOCI). These FOCI increased in size as the infection progressed and contained dead type I pneumocytes. Both of these phenotypes were attenuated in infections caused by bacteria secreting ADPRT-deficient ExoS, indicating that FOCI growth and type I pneumocyte death were dependent on the ADPRT activity of ExoS. During the course of infection, increased FOCI size was associated with enhanced disruption of the pulmonary-vascular barrier and increased bacterial dissemination into the blood, both of which were also dependent on the ADPRT activity of ExoS. We conclude that the ADPRT activity of ExoS acts upon type I pneumocytes to disrupt the pulmonary-vascular barrier during P. aeruginosa pneumonia, leading to bacterial dissemination.

BACKGROUND: Patients' comprehension of their medical conditions is fundamental to patient-centered care. Hospitalizations present opportunities to educate patients but also challenges to patient comprehension given the complexity and rapid pace of clinical care. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to characterize the current state of inpatients' knowledge of their hospitalization, assess the methods used to determine patient comprehension, and appraise the effects of interventions on improving knowledge. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library for articles published from January 1, 1995 through December 11, 2017. Eligible studies included patients under inpatient or observation status on internal medicine, family medicine, or neurology services. We extracted study characteristics (author, year, country, study design, sample size, patient characteristics, methods, intervention, primary endpoints, results) in a standardized fashion. The quality of observational studies was assessed using the NIH Quality Assessment Tool for Observation Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies and the quality of interventional studies was assessed using adapted EPOC criteria from the Cochrane Collaboration. RESULTS: Twenty-eight studies met the criteria for inclusion, including 17 observational studies and 11 interventional studies. Patient knowledge of all aspects of their hospitalization was poor and patients often overestimated their knowledge. Older patients and those with lower education levels were more likely to have poorer knowledge. Intervention methods varied, but generally showed improvements in patient knowledge. Few interventional studies assessed the effect on health behaviors or outcomes and those that did were often underpowered. DISCUSSION: Clinicians should be aware that comprehension is often poor among hospitalized patients, especially in those with lower education and advanced age. Our results are limited by overall poor quality of interventional studies. Future research should use objective, standardized measures of patient comprehension and interventions should be multifaceted in approach, focusing on knowledge improvement while also addressing other factors influencing outcomes.knowledge and health behaviors (e.g., medication adherence) and clinical outcomes (e.g., hospital readmission), though this was not the primary aim of the review.A medical librarian (J.P.), with training in systematic review methodology, searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library for articles published from January 1, 1995 through December 11, 2017. The following subject terms and keywords were used: inpatients, knowledge, comprehension, hospitalization, patient discharge, discharge planning, and goals of patient care (Appendixes 1, 2, and 3). We limited results to English language publications of randomized controlled trials, prospective analyses, retrospective analyses, case control, cohort, cross-sectional, and non-controlled before-and-after studies that were published in peer-reviewed journal...

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa can utilize a variety of carbon sources and produces many secondary metabolites to help survive harsh environments. P. aeruginosa is part of a small group of bacteria that use the kynurenine pathway to catabolize tryptophan. Through the kynurenine pathway, tryptophan is broken down into anthranilate, which is further degraded into tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates or utilized to make numerous aromatic compounds, including the Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS). We have previously shown that the kynurenine pathway is a critical source of anthranilate for PQS synthesis and that the kynurenine pathway genes (kynA and kynBU) are upregulated in the presence of kynurenine. A putative Lrp/AsnC-type transcriptional regulator (gene PA2082, here called kynR), is divergently transcribed from the kynBU operon and is highly conserved in Gram-negative bacteria that harbor the kynurenine pathway. We show that a mutation in kynR renders P. aeruginosa unable to utilize L-tryptophan as a sole carbon source and decreases PQS production. In addition, we found that the increase of kynA and kynB transcriptional activity in response to kynurenine was completely abolished in a kynR mutant, further indicating that KynR mediates the kynurenine-dependent expression of the kynurenine pathway genes. Finally, we found that purified KynR specifically bound the kynA promoter in the presence of kynurenine and bound the kynB promoter in the absence or presence of kynurenine. Taken together, our data show that KynR directly regulates the kynurenine pathway genes.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common nosocomial pathogen that relies on three cell-to-cell signals to regulate multiple virulence factors. The Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS; 2-heptyl-3-hydroxy-4-quinolone) is one of these signals, and it is known to be important for P. aeruginosa pathogenesis. PQS is synthesized in a multistep reaction that condenses anthranilate and a fatty acid. In P. aeruginosa, anthranilate is produced via the kynurenine pathway and two separate anthranilate synthases, TrpEG and PhnAB, the latter of which is important for PQS synthesis. Others have previously shown that a P. aeruginosa tryptophan auxotroph could grow on tryptophan-depleted medium with a frequency of 10 ؊5 to 10 ؊6 . These revertants produced more pyocyanin and had increased levels of phnA transcript. In this study, we constructed similar tryptophan auxotroph revertants and found that the reversion resulted from a synonymous G-to-A nucleotide mutation within pqsC. This change resulted in increased pyocyanin and decreased PQS, along with an increase in the level of the pqsD, pqsE, and phnAB transcripts. Reporter fusion and reverse transcriptase PCR studies indicated that a novel transcript containing pqsD, pqsE, and phnAB occurs in these revertants, and quantitative real-time PCR experiments suggested that the same transcript appears in the wild-type strain under nutrientlimiting conditions. These results imply that the PQS biosynthetic operon can produce an internal transcript that increases anthranilate production and greatly elevates the expression of the PQS signal response protein PqsE. This suggests a novel mechanism to ensure the production of both anthranilate and PQS-controlled virulence factors.