Physiological and biochemical changes accompanying the loss of mucoidy by Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa M60, a mucoid strain, was grown in continuous culture (D 0.05 h-1) under ammonia limitation with glucose as the carbon source. Steady-state alginate production occurred for only 1-2 d under these conditions [qalginate 0.097 g alginate h-1 (g dry wt cells)-1], after which time the percentage of mucoid cells and the alginate concentration in the culture decreased in parallel and approached zero after approximately 10 d. These changes were accompanied by similar decreases in the activities of the alginate biosynthetic enzymes (represented by phosphomannomutase and GDP-mannose dehydrogenase) and by a large increase in the activity of the first enzyme of the 'external' non-phosphorylative pathway of glucose metabolism, glucose dehydrogenase. In contrast, the activities of other enzymes associated with this pathway (gluconate dehydrogenase, 2-ketogluconate kinase plus 2-ketogluconate-6-phosphate reductase) or with the 'internal' phosphorylative pathway of glucose metabolism (glucokinase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase) remained essentially unchanged. The loss of mucoidy and alginate production was accompanied by the appearance of low concentrations of intracellular polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) and of extracellular gluconate and 2-ketogluconate (partly at the expense of alginate production and partly as a result of increased glucose consumption). It is suggested that ammonia-limited, glucose-excess cultures of P. aeruginosa growing at low dilution rate are unable fully to regulate the rate at which glucose and/or its 'external' pathway metabolites are taken up by the cell, and therefore form copious amounts of alginate in order both to overcome the potentially deleterious osmotic effects of accumulating surplus intracellular metabolites and to consume the surplus ATP generated by the further oxidation of these metabolites. The loss of mucoidy invokes the use of an alternative, but analogous, strategy via which non-mucoid cells produce an osmotically inactive intracellular product (PHA) plus increased amounts of the extracellular metabolites gluconate and 2-ketogluconate via the low-energy-yielding and, under these conditions, largely dead-end 'external' metabolic pathway.