Transcriptome Study of Cold Plasma Treated Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Cold plasma is a disinfection technique widely used in food, agricultural, and medical industries. This work used cold plasma to sterilize Pseudomonas aeruginosa and cell survivability was determined. RNA sequencing was used to determine the bacterial responses at 1 minute (T1), 3 minutes (T3), and 5 minutes (T5) of cold plasma treatments. The results show that longer treatment leads to lower cell survivability. Cold plasma induced rapid cell responses in P. aeruginosa. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis showed that T5 had the most enriched terms compared to T1 and T3. The most affected genes were those involved in antioxidant production, transcriptional regulators, ribosome formation, transporters, chemotaxis, and cell motility. P. aeruginosa's initial response (T1) to cold plasma involved the upregulation of antioxidant genes, followed by the downregulation of transcriptional regulators, transporters, chemotaxis, and cell motility as the intermediate response (T3), and the final response (T5) included heavy downregulation in ribosome formation. Previous transcriptome studies of cold plasma focused mainly on prokaryotic cells such as E. coli and B. subtilis, while studies on P. aeruginosa are limited. This study demonstrated the sequential response of P. aeruginosa against cold plasma via transcriptome analysis.