Characteristics and distribution of plasmids in a clonally diverse set of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus st
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Characteristics and distribution of plasmids in a clonally diverse set of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains Lucie Kuntova´ • Roman Pantu˚cˇek • Jana Ra´jova´ • Vladislava Ru˚zˇicˇkova´ • Petr Petra´sˇ • Ivana Masˇlanˇova´ • Jirˇ´ı Dosˇkarˇ
Received: 10 August 2011 / Revised: 11 January 2012 / Accepted: 27 January 2012 / Published online: 14 February 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract The aim of this study was to compare the plasmid contents of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains classified into different clonal clusters (CCs). The isolates were collected from 15 Czech hospitals in 2000–2008. Plasmid DNA was detected in 65 (89%) strains, and 33 of them harbored more than one plasmid type. Altogether 24 different types of plasmids were identified, ranging in size from 1.3 to 55 kb. Restriction endonuclease analysis, plasmid elimination, DNA hybridization, and sequencing were used for their further characterization. It has been found that the conjugative, erythromycin resistance and enterotoxin D encoding plasmids are harbored by strains from different CCs. On the other hand, chloramphenicol and tetracycline resistance plasmids, and most of the penicillinase and cryptic plasmids were only detected in certain CCs. Especially, the pUSA300-like plasmids were found exclusively in the USA300 clone strains. The high diversity in
Communicated by Sebastian Suerbaum.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00203-012-0797-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. L. Kuntova´ R. Pantu˚cˇek J. Ra´jova´ V. Ru˚zˇicˇkova´ I. Masˇlanˇova´ J. Dosˇkarˇ (&) Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotla´ˇrska´ 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] P. Petra´sˇ National Reference Laboratory for Staphylococci, National Institute of Public Health, 100 42 Prague, Czech Republic
plasmid content detected in the study strains implies that plasmids play a major role in evolution of MRSA clonal lineages. Keywords Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Plasmids Genetic diversity Antibiotic resistance Molecular typing
Introduction Staphylococcus aureus is a major human pathogen that causes both nosocomial and community-acquired infections that range from superficial skin infection to severe life-threatening systemic diseases. MRSA strains whose defining feature is the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) conferring methicillin resistance have remained an important health problem worldwide. Apart from this cassette, MRSA strains contain other mobile genetic elements (MGEs) such as plasmids, prophages, transposons, and pathogenicity islands, which comprise about 15% of the genome (Lindsay et al. 2006). MGEs carry most of the genes through which staphylococcal strains vary from each other, such as resistance and virulence genes (Skov and Jensen 2009). There is evidence that the distribution of some MGEs between lineages is not
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