An immunological study of the pili of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Abstract

An attempt was made to correlate serological relationships determined by the pili, the flagella and the O-somatic antigens of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and to make a preliminary assessment of use of the pilus antigen as an epidemiological marker. A method is described for the preparation of antiserum specific for the "normal' PSA pili of P. aeruginosa. A high titre of pilus antibodies was obtained by immunizing rabbits with mutants whose pili had lost their ability to retract into the cell. The "normal' form of the organism, with retractile pili, was poorly agglutinated by high-titre anti-pilus serum, but suspensions of it that had been treated with osmium tetroxide showed greatly increased agglutinability. Antibody labelling for electron microscopy was used to determine the serological relations of pili and of flagella for P. aeruginosa strains belonging to different serological groups as defined by O-somatic antigens. The distribution of pilar and flagellar antigens among strains was not correlated with the O-somatic serotype. A strain of P. aeruginosa carrying a drug-resistance plasmid had fewer "normal' PSA pili than the background strain.