Swarming motility Patterns of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from Otitis media

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa presents three types of motility: swimming , twitching and swarming. The latter is characterized by rapid and coordinated group movement over a semisolid (viscous) surface resulting from morphological differentiation and intercellular interactions. A striking feature of P. aeruginosa swarming motility is the formation of migrating tendrils producing colonies with complex fractal-like patterns. In this study we reported an evidence that P. aeruginosa can spread on semisolid surfaces and expose swarming motility and to investigate the swarming motility patterns of these bacteria isolating from Otitis media, we culturing thirty clinical isolations of these bacterium on the swarming agar plate containing 0.5% agar. Our results reveals that 12 (40%) of studied isolates were detected dendritic swarming pattern , and 18 (60%) of these isolates were ring swarming pattern, besides that seven of P. aeruginosa total isolates were able to reveal both patterns of swarming motility when sub cultured on new swarming agar media, the results showed that the site of bacteria isolation don't influence and determine a swarming motility patterns of this bacteria, where, there are many studies on the same bacteria isolated from different infection sites which show the same swarming motility patterns according to this study. However, the mechanisms responsible for the dendritic and ring swarming patterns are largely unknown. Swarming motility may be an important factor in the pathogenesis of P. aeruginosa.