In Vivo Metabolic Analysis of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Live Bacteria Using High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning NMR Spectroscopy

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is a human opportunistic pathogen responsible for chronic and acute infections, and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Bacterical cell walls have a very complicated structure, consisting of integrated macromolecules such as carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins. This structure is highly heterogeneous among individual bacterial cells, due to constant biosynthesis, assembly, disassembly, and turnover. To understand the bacterical cell wall structures destructive methods have been used to analyze the individual components. These in vitro results may not faithfully reflect the native structural and conformational information. Recently, cell NMR spectroscopy has gained recent popularity. 1H High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning (HRMAS) NMR can determine bacterial structure in detail. Here, 1H HRMAS NMR was applied to Pseudomonas aeruginosa to determine the metabolites in living cells.