Research Interests

The bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen in humans causing severe and sometimes life threatening infections. In individuals with cystic fibrosis, a common genetic disease, Pseudomonas aeruginosa is able to infect and colonize the lungs. This chronic infection and the host's immune response progressively damages the lung tissue resulting in a loss of lung function. The long term goal of our research is to understand how the bacteria are able to infect and colonize the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients and to develop new approaches to control these infections.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa relies on a battery of extracellular and cell-associated products to attach to, replicate in and damage the host during an infection. Pseudomonas aeruginosa controls the production of these factors, called virulence factors, so that specific factors are only produced when required. The goals of this research are: 1) to characterize the molecular mechanisms controlling the expression of virulence factors, 2) to determine the specific signals controlling their production, and 3) to analyze the role and regulation of virulence factors in the lung disease associated with cystic fibrosis.

 

Courses Taught F09-W10

Graduate Students

Selected publications

• Erickson, D.L., Endersby, R., Kirkham, A., Stuber, K., Vollman, D.D., Rabin, H.R., Mitchell, I. and D.G. Storey. 2002. Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum-sending systems may control virulence factor expression in the lugns of patients with Cystic Fibrosis. Infection and Immunity 70: 1783-1790.
• Hunt, T.A., Peng, W.-T., Loubens, I. and D.G. Storey. 2002. The Pseudomonas aeruginosa alternative sigma factor PvdS controls exotoxin A expression and is expressed in lung infections associated with Cystic Fibrosis. Microbiology 148: 3183-3193.
• Parkins, M.D., Altebaeumer, M., Ceri, H. and Storey, D.G. 2001. Subtractive hybridization based identification of genes uniquely or hyper-expressed during biofilm growth. In Doyle (eds), Methods in Enzymology 336:76-84
• Ceri, H., Olson, M.E., Morck, D., Storey, D., Read, R., and B. Olson. 2001. The MBECTM assay system: Multiple equivalent biofilms for antibiotic and biocide susceptibility testing. In Doyle (eds), Methods in Enzymology 337:377-385
• De Kievit, T.R., Parkins, M.D., Gillis, R.J., Srikumar, R., Ceri, H., Poole, K., Iglewski, B.H. and Storey, D.G. 2001. Multidrug Efflux Pumps: expression patterns and contribution to antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 45: 1761-1770.
• Parkins, M.D., Ceri, H., and Storey, D.G. 2001. Pseudomonas aeruginosa GacA, a factor in multihost virulence, is also essential for biofilm formation. Molecular Microbiology. 40: 1215-1226
• Gallant, C., T.L. Raivio, J.C. Olson, D.E. Woods and D.G. Storey. (2000). Characterization of inactive exotocin A produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis patients. Microbiology 146: 1891-1899.
• Hongjiang Yang, M. Matewish, I. Loubens, D.G. Storey, J.S. Lam and Shouguang Jin. (2000). migA, a quorum responsive gene of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is highly expressed in cystic fibrosis lung environment and modifies low-molecular-weight lipopolysaccharide. Microbiology 146: 2509-2519.
• Bruno, T.F., D.E. Woods, D.G. Storey and C.H. Mody. 1999. Recombinant Pseudomonas exoenzyme S and exoenzyme S from Pseudomonas aeruginosa DG1 share the abiilty to stimulate T lymphocyte proliferation. Can. J. Microbiol. 45: 607-611.
• Barclay, N.G., J.C.L. Spurell, T.F. Bruno, D.G. Storey, D.E. Woods and C.H. Mody. 1999. Pseudomonas aeruginosa exoenzyme S stimulates murine lymphocyte proliferation in vitro. Infect. Immun. 67: 4613-4619.
• Storey, D.G., E.E. Ujack, H.R. Rabin, I. Mitchell. 1998. Pseudomonas aeruginosa lasR transcription correlates with the transcription of lasA, lasB and toxA in the chronic lung infections associated with cystic fibrosis. Infect. Immun. 66(6): 2521-2528.
• Brumlik, M.J. and D.G. Storey. 1998. Post-transcriptional control of Pseudomonas aeruginosa LasB expression involves the 5' untranslated region of the mRNA. FEMS Microbiology Letters. 159(2): 233-239.
• Storey, D.G., E.E. Ujack, I. Mitchell and H.R. Rabin. 1997. Positive correlation of algD transcription to lasB and lasA transcription by populations of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis. Infect. Immun. 65(10): 4061-4067.
• Raivio, T.L., D. Hoffer, R.W. Prince, M.L. Vasil and D.G. Storey. 1996. Linker insertion scanning of regA, an lasA an activator of exotoxin A production in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Mol. Microbiol. 22: 239-254.
• Raivio, T.L., E.E. Ujack, H.R. Rabin, D.G. Storey. 1994. An association between transcript levels of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa regA regB and tox A Genes in Sputa of Cystic Fibrosis Patients Infect. Immun. 62: 3506-3514.
• Frank, D.W. and D.G. Storey. 1994. Regulation of expression of Pseudomonas exotoxin A by iron. In Clark and Bavoil (eds), " Methods in Enzymology", 235: 502-517.