Anti-restriction protein ArdA promotes clinical Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing K. pneumoniae spread and its molecular mechanism.

These findings suggest that the coexistence advantage of ArdA with the blaKPC-2 plasmids may provide KPC-producing K. pneumoniae with a very efficient evasion of the restriction of type I systems, which not only favours ArdA-containing mobile genetic elements in the same species HGT between bacteria also facilitates HGT between other bacterial species.