Creation of a drug-sensitive reporter strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a tool for the rapid screening of antimicrobial products

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance of bacteria is a considerable challenge to human health in the 21st century. With our discovery pipeline for new and effective antibiotics rapidly drying out, innovative approaches are needed to find new antimicrobials. Soil fungi are known to produce a variety of antimicrobials but rapid screening of fungi that produce such compounds remains a challenge. In this work, we used a hyper-susceptible strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to create a luminescent-reporter strain to be used as a screening tool to select fungi producing antimicrobials. We show that use of such a strain can not only significantly expedite the initial screening but also allows us to detect antimicrobials that may be produced in low concentrations. We believe that our reporter strain can be a valuable tool in identifying fungi that produce novel antimicrobials.