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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2001, p. 1195-1204, Vol. 183, No. 4
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.4.1195-1204.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Initiation of Biofilm Formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa 57RP Correlates with Emergence of Hyperpiliated and Highly Adherent Phenotypic Variants Deficient in Swimming, Swarming, and Twitching Motilities

Eric Déziel,1,2 Yves Comeau,2 and Richard Villemur1,*

INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier-Microbiologie et Biotechnologie, Laval, Québec, Canada H7V 1B7,1 and Civil, Geological, and Mining Engineering Department, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3A72

Received 14 July 2000/Accepted 16 November 2000

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a ubiquitous environmental bacterium capable of forming biofilms on surfaces as a survival strategy. It exhibits a large variety of competition/virulence factors, such as three types of motilities: flagellum-mediated swimming, flagellum-mediated swarming, and type IV pilus-mediated twitching. A strategy frequently used by bacteria to survive changing environmental conditions is to create a phenotypically heterogeneous population by a mechanism called phase variation. In this report, we describe the characterization of phenotypic variants forming small, rough colonies that spontaneously emerged when P. aeruginosa 57RP was cultivated as a biofilm or in static liquid cultures. These small-colony (S) variants produced abundant type IV fimbriae, displayed defective swimming, swarming, and twitching motilities, and were impaired in chemotaxis. They also autoaggregated in liquid cultures and rapidly initiated the formation of strongly adherent biofilms. In contrast, the large-colony variant (parent form) was poorly adherent, homogeneously dispersed in liquid cultures, and produced scant polar fimbriae. Further analysis of the S variants demonstrated differences in a variety of other phenotypic traits, including increased production of pyocyanin and pyoverdine and reduced elastase activity. Under appropriate growth conditions, cells of each phenotype switched to the other phenotype at a fairly high frequency. We conclude that these S variants resulted from phase variation and were selectively enriched when P. aeruginosa 57RP was grown as a biofilm or in static liquid cultures. We propose that phase variation ensures the prior presence of phenotypic forms well adapted to initiate the formation of a biofilm as soon as environmental conditions are favorable.

* Corresponding author. INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier-Microbiologie et Biotechnologie, 531 Boul. des Prairies, Laval, Québec, Canada H7V 1B7. Phone: (450) 687-5010. Fax: (450) 686-5501. E-mail: richard.villemur{at}inrs-iaf.uquebec.ca.

Journal of Bacteriology, February 2001, p. 1195-1204, Vol. 183, No. 4
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.4.1195-1204.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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