Assessing genetic diversity and similarity of 435 KPC-carrying plasmids.
Christian BrandtAdrian ViehwegerAbhijeet SinghMathias W PletzDaniel WibbergJörn KalinowskiSandrina LerchBettina MüllerOliwia MakarewiczPublished in: Scientific reports (2019)
The global spread and diversification of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative (MRGN) bacteria poses major challenges to healthcare. In particular, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae strains have been frequently identified in infections and hospital-wide outbreaks. The most frequently underlying resistance gene (blaKPC) has been spreading over the last decade in the health care setting. blaKPC seems to have rapidly diversified and has been found in various species and on different plasmid types. To review the progress and dynamics of this diversification, all currently available KPC plasmids in the NCBI database were analysed in this work. Plasmids were grouped into 257 different representative KPC plasmids, of which 79.4% could be clearly assigned to incompatibility (Inc) group or groups. In almost half of all representative plasmids, the KPC gene is located on Tn4401 variants, emphasizing the importance of this transposon type for the transmission of KPC genes to other plasmids. The transposons also seem to be responsible for the occurrence of altered or uncommon fused plasmid types probably due to incomplete transposition. Moreover, many KPC plasmids contain genes that encode proteins promoting recombinant processes and mutagenesis; in consequence accelerating the diversification of KPC genes and other colocalized resistance genes.
Keyphrases
- klebsiella pneumoniae
- multidrug resistant
- gram negative
- escherichia coli
- healthcare
- genome wide
- genome wide identification
- drug resistant
- acinetobacter baumannii
- genetic diversity
- copy number
- genome wide analysis
- crispr cas
- bioinformatics analysis
- dna methylation
- risk assessment
- emergency department
- adverse drug
- cell free
- acute care