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Abrp, a new gene, confers reduced susceptibility to tetracycline, glycylcine, chloramphenicol and fosfomycin classes in Acinetobacter baumannii

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Abstract

Acinetobacter baumannii, a non-fermenting gram-negative coccobacillus, is a major pathogen responsible for a variety of healthcare-associated infections, including pneumonia, urinary tract and bloodstream infections. Moreover, A. baumannii is associated with alarming increases in drug resistance rates to almost all available antibiotics leaving limited treatment options. Here, we characterize the biological functions of a novel gene, abrp, which encodes a peptidase C13 family. We demonstrate that the abrp is associated with decreased susceptibility to tetracycline, minocycline, doxycycline, tigecycline, chloramphenicol and fosfomycin. Deletion of abrp was able to increase cell membrane permeability and display slower cell growth rate. Results from the present study show that abrp plays an important role in conferring reduced susceptibility to different classes of antibiotics and cell growth in A. baumannii. The change of antibiotic sensitivities may result from modifications to the cell membrane permeability of A. baumannii.

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Acknowledgments

We are extremely thankful to Kim Lee Chua (National University of Singapore) for giving pMo130-telR as a kind gift.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Infectious Diseases, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310016, China

    X. Li, J. Quan, Y. Yang, J. Ji, L. Liu, Y. Fu, X. Hua, Y. Chen, B. Pi, Y. Jiang & Y. Yu

  2. Centre of Laboratory Medicine, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, 158 Shangtang Road, Hangzhou, 310014, China

    X. Li

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  1. X. Li
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  2. J. Quan
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Correspondence to Y. Yu.

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Funding

This work was supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (grant no. 81230039), the Young Scholar of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 81201327) and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang province, China (Grant No. LY15H190004).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Fig. S1

Amino acid sequence alignment of abrp. Sequence alignments were analysed with CLUSTAL X (http://www.clustal.org/clustal2/) and formatting using the ESPript server (http://espript.ibcp.fr/ESPript/cgi-bin/ESPript.cgi). The accession numbers of abrp homologues from different bacteria are shown in brackets, including Acinetobacter baumannii (ATCC 17978), Acinetobacter pittii (WP_016144399, 85 % identity and 91 % similarity), Acinetobacter junii (WP_039047158, 84 % identity and 91 % similarity), Pseudomonas fluorescens (WP_038443591, 40 % identity and 57 % similarity), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (WP_034031112, 36 % identity and 55 % similarity). The predicted secondary structural elements of abrp in A. baumannii are displayed on the lines above the sequence alignment using PSIPRED (http://bioinf.cs.ucl.ac.uk/psipred/). The arrows indicate β-sheet, and the coils indicate α-helices. Strictly conserved residues have a red background and are indicated by bold letters; residues conserved between groups are boxed. (PPTX 1244 kb)

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Table S2

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Li, X., Quan, J., Yang, Y. et al. Abrp, a new gene, confers reduced susceptibility to tetracycline, glycylcine, chloramphenicol and fosfomycin classes in Acinetobacter baumannii . Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 35, 1371–1375 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-016-2674-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-016-2674-0

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