Summary Bacteria form surface attached biofilm communities as one of the most important survival strategies in nature. Biofilms consist of water, bacterial cells and a wide range of self‐generated extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). Biofilm formation is a dynamic self‐assembly process and several distinguishable stages are observed during bacterial biofilm development. Biofilm formation is shown to be coordinated by EPS...

Summary Chronic infections in the respiratory tracts of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients are important to investigate, both from medical and from fundamental ecological points of view. Cystic fibrosis respiratory tracts can be described as natural environments harbouring persisting microbial communities with Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a dominant pathogen. Various factors contribute to the complexity of this ecosystem, including co...

Summary The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa has redundant molecular systems that contribute to its pathogenicity. Those assembling fimbrial structures promote complex organized community lifestyle. We characterized a new 5.8 kb genetic locus, cupE , that includes the conserved usher‐ and chaperone‐encoding genes. This locus, widely conserved in different bacterial species, contains four additional genes encoding...

Summary Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen ubiquitous to the natural environment but with the capability of moving to the host environment. Long‐term infection of the airways of cystic fibrosis patients is associated with extensive genetic adaptation of P. aeruginosa , and we have studied cases of the initial stages of infection in order to characterize the early adaptive processes in the colonizing bacteria....