Natural and synthetic molecules with potential to enhance biofilm formation and virulence properties in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa can efficiently adapt to changing environmental conditions due to its ubiquitous nature, intrinsic/acquired/adaptive resistance mechanisms, high metabolic versatility, and the production of numerous virulence factors. As a result, P. aeruginosa becomes an opportunistic pathogen, causing chronic infection in the lungs and several organs of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis. Biofilm established by P. aeruginosa in host tissues and medical device surfaces has been identified as a major obstruction to antimicrobial therapy. P. aeruginosa is very likely to be closely associated with the various microorganisms in the host tissues or organs in a pathogenic or nonpathogenic behavior. Aside from host-derived molecules, other beneficial and pathogenic microorganisms produce a diverse range of secondary metabolites that either directly or indirectly favor the persistence of P. aeruginosa. Thus, it is critical to understand how P. aeruginosa interacts with different molecules and ions in the host and abiotic environment to produce extracellular polymeric substances and virulence factors. Thus, the current review discusses how various natural and synthetic molecules in the environment induce biofilm formation and the production of multiple virulence factors.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Pseudomonas aeruginosa
• biofilms
• virulence factors
• environmental factors
• natural molecules
• synthetic compounds

Acknowledgments

Parts of graphical abstract and Figure 1 were drawn by using templates from Servier Medical Art, licensed under a Creative Common Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Author contributions

Geum-Jae Jeong: collected data, wrote, and reviewed the manuscript. Fazlurrahman Khan: conceptualized the idea, supervised, funding, collected the literature, drafted, and reviewed the manuscript. Nazia Tabassum: collected data and wrote the manuscript. Young-Mog Kim: supervision, funding, writing, and editing. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research involving human participants and or animals

This article does not contain any studies associated with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea grant funded by the Ministry of Education (2021R1A6A1A03039211 and 2022R1A2B5B01001998). This research was also supported by Basic Science Research Program through the NRF of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education (RS-2023-00241461 to F.Khan).