ABSTRACT
Multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the main opportunistic pathogens causing severe infection. One of the mechanisms involved in the resistance to imipenem in clinical isolates is the loss of the OprD porin. Changes like substitutions, deletions, insertions, or mutations in the oprD gene can modify the conformation of OprD porin or inhibit its presence and generate resistance to carbapenems. The aim of this work was to obtain anti-OprD polyclonal antibodies and to determine by both immunofluorescence microscopy (IFI) and Western blot assays, the presence of the OprD porin in resistant-carbapenem P. aeruginosa strains with different changes in the oprD gene. Changes in the gene oprD were identified in clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa. When proteins were translated, several polymorphisms were found; however, these did not affect the presence of OprD porin (PCM25, PCM36, and PCM78). Also it was detected an insertion sequence ISPa1328 (PCM52) and a premature stop codon (PCM91), which inhibited the presence of the OprD porin. This study shows how changes in the oprD gene of P. aeruginosa clinical isolates affect the presence of the OprD porin detected by Western blot and indirect immunofluorescence assays using specific polyclonal anti-OprD antibodies generated in this work.
