Long-term colonization of the cystic fibrosis lung by Burkholderia cepacia complex bacteria: epidemiology, clonal variation, and genome-wide expression alterations.

"Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest."

"The contribution, over the last 16 years of epidemiological surveys of Bcc respiratory infections in CF patients receiving care at Hospital de Santa Maria, in Lisbon, of Luís Lito, Maria José Salgado, José Melo-Cristino, Susana Correia, Celeste Barreto, and Pilar Azevedo, is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to acknowledge Andrea Saas and Eshwar Mahenthiralingam, Cardiff School of Biosciences, UK, and Hemant Keller, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Center for Bioinformatics, USA, for all the support provided with the execution of microarray experiments and raw data analysis. The work described in this article that was carried out in our laboratory work was funded by “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT, Portugal): contracts PTDC/SAU-MII/69591/2006 and ERA-PTG/SAU/0001/2008 – this under the ERA-NET PathoGenoMics ADHRES Signature Project – and post-doctoral and PhD fellowships awarded to Sandra C. dos Santos (SFRH/BPD/75483/2010), Nuno P. Mira (SFRH/BPD/46982/2008), and Andreia Madeira (SFRH/BD/37012/2007). The microarray analysis was sponsored by Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics Inc. (CFFT) under the scope of the Burkholderia Array project (contract BA-009-A). This research is also performed under the COST Action BM1003 “Microbial cell surface determinants of virulence as targets for new therapeutics in Cystic Fibrosis.”"