Impact of Pseudomonas aeruginosa gene PA1550 on its swimming and twitching motility

OBJECTIVE: Studying the genes involved in swimming and twitching motility of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. METHODS: We used Mu transposition technique, gene cloning, nucleotide sequencing and the trans-complementation experiment to study the genes involved in twitching motility and swimming motility of P. aeruginosa strain PA68 isolated from a patient with bronchiectasis. RESULTS: A mutant deficient in both swimming and twitching motility was isolated out of about 2000 mini-Mu insertion mutants. The result of GenBank BLAST showed that the mini-Mu transposon had inserted into the gene PA1550 with unknown function. Analyses on the operon of PA550 and the polar effect revealed that Mu transposon had no effect on the transcription of the downstream genes of PA1550. CONCLUSION: PA1550 is involved in the swimming and twitching motility of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.