Fig. 1.

Comparison of nucleotide sequence variation among QS genes of P. aeruginosa isolates of the IPCD. There is a high degree of variation in nucleotide sequences in many of the QS genes, obscuring patterns in mutation overlap between genes within an isolate. (a) A Venn diagram of las and rhl system genes are plotted together, showing how many isolates share mutations in multiple genes. In total, 246 isolates are mutated for all four genes, and few isolates have mutations in only a single gene. (b) A Venn diagram for pqsABCD shows a similar pattern and 683 isolates are mutated in all four genes, while few isolates are mutated in only one pqs gene. (c) Few isolates have only one pqs gene mutation, and 430 isolates have mutations in all pqsEHLR genes. (d) A Venn diagram of the negative QS regulators vqsR, rsaL and qscR show that 132 isolates share mutations in all three genes.