Over the last 70 years, we’ve all gotten used to an Escherichia coli -centric view of the microbial world. However, genomics, as well as the development of improved tools for genetic manipulation in other species, is showing us that other bugs do things differently, and that we cannot simply extrapolate from E. coli to everything else. A particularly good example of this is encountered when considering the mechanism(s) involved in DNA mismatch repair by the opportunistic human pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA). This is a particularly relevant phenotype to examine in PA, since defects in the mismatch repair (MMR) machinery often give rise to the property of hypermutability. This, in turn, is linked with the vertical acquisition of important pathoadaptive traits in the organism, such as antimicrobial resistance. But it turns out that PA lacks some key genes associated with MMR in E. coli , and a closer inspection of what is known (or can be inferred) about the MMR enzymology reveals profound differences compared with other, well-characterized organisms. Here, we review these differences and comment on their biological implications.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections commonly develop in individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF), and its adaptation in such an unfavourable condition is always found to be related to hypermutation. In fact, most of the hypermutation is due to the defects in mutS gene which involves in the mismatch repair mechanism, causing the acceleration of mutation rate and adaptive evolution. In order to rheostatically express the MutS protein and achieve “hypomutation” (in which the rate of mutation is lower than that of wild type strain), an exogenous mutS gene with rhamnose-inducible promoter was cloned into MPAO1 mutS::Tn mutant strain. Present findings demonstrate that this system is tightly-controlled and stable, with less rifampicin-resistant mutant frequency and more fluorescence intensity from a GFP-tagged MutS expressing cells were observed when the concentration of the inducer increases. Interestingly, the results from Western blot analysis show that less MutS protein is required to suppress hypermutation in the wild type strain, as compared to our construct that behaves similar to the wild type but obviously needs more MutS expression to achieve such state. This indicates that the exogenous MutS might be lacking of other important protein to work efficiently in mismatch recognition. Therefore, based on our cDNA analysis, we found that fdxA gene next to the mutS gene is in the same operon, which could suggest that they might be functionally related in the DNA repair machinery.

The objective of this study was to compare the characteristics of Dental Pulp Stem Cells (DPSCs) derived from healthy human permanent teeth with those that were orthodontically-intruded to serve as potential Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC). Recruited subjects were treated with orthodontic intrusion on one side of the maxillary first premolar while the opposite side served as the control for a period of six weeks before the dental pulp was extracted. Isolated DPSCs from both the control and intruded samples were analyzed, looking at the morphology, growth kinetics, cell surface marker profile, and multilineage differentiation for MSC characterisation. Our study showed that cells isolated from both groups were able to attach to the cell culture flask, exhibited fibroblast-like morphology under light microscopy, able to differentiate into osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages as well as tested positive for MSCs cell surface markers CD90 and CD105 but negative for haematopoietic cell surface markers CD34 and HLA-DR. Both groups displayed a trend of gradually increasing population doubling time from passage 1 to passage 5. Viable DPSCs from both groups were successfully recovered from their cryopreserved state. In conclusion, DPSCs in the dental pulp of upper premolar not only remained viable after 6 weeks of orthodontic intrusion using fixed appliances but also able to develop into MSCs.