Unraveling Enterococcus susceptibility to quaternary ammonium compounds: genes, phenotypes, and the impact of environmental conditions.

ABSTRACT: Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) have been extensively used in the community, healthcare facilities, and food chain, in concentrations between 20 and 30,000 mg/L. Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium are ubiquitous in these settings and are recognized as nosocomial pathogens worldwide, but QACs' activity against strains from diverse epidemiological and genomic backgrounds remained largely unexplored. We evaluated the role of Enterococcus isolates from different sources, years, and clonal lineages as hosts of QACs tolerance genes and their susceptibility to QACs in optimal, single-stress and cross-stress growth conditions. Only 1% of the Enterococcus isolates included in this study and 0.5% of publicly available Enterococcus genomes carried <

SUBMITTER: Pereira AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10581157 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature