Results of cross-species study suggest Pseudomonas aeruginosa virulence factors are largely host-specific

Dubern JF, Cigana C, De Simone M, Lazenby J, Juhas M, Schwager S, Bianconi I, Döring G, Eberl L, Williams P, Bragonzi A, Cámara M. Integrated whole genome screening for Pseudomonas aeruginosa virulence genes using multiple disease models reveals that pathogenicity is host specific. Environ Microbiol. 2015 Apr 3. doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.12863. PMID: 25845292.

From the abstract: "Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a multi-host opportunistic pathogen causing a wide range of diseases ... Using an integrated whole-genome approach we searched for P. aeruginosa virulence genes with multi-host relevance. ... pleotropic mutants were assayed for reduced toxicity in Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, human cell lines, and mice. Surprisingly, the screening revealed that the virulence of the majority of P. aeruginosa mutants varied between disease models ... These findings have important implication when searching for novel anti-virulence targets to develop new treatments against P. aeruginosa."

Review: study of infectious pathogens in the fly model

Panayidou S, Ioannidou E, Apidianakis Y. Human pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and viruses in Drosophila: Disease modeling, lessons, and shortcomings. Virulence. 2014 Jan 7;5(2). PMID: 24398387.