Prevalence and mechanisms of high-level carbapenem antibiotic tolerance in clinical isolates of <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i>.

ABSTRACT: Antibiotic tolerance is the ability of bacteria to survive normally lethal doses of antibiotics for extended time periods. Clinically significant Enterobacterales, for example, often exhibit high tolerance to the last-resort antibiotic meropenem. Meropenem tolerance is associated with formation of cell wall-deficient spheroplasts that readily recover to rod shape and normal growth upon removal of the antibiotic. Both the true prevalence of tolerance, and genetic mechanisms underlying it, remain poorly understood. Here, we find that meropenem tolerance is widespread among clinical Enterobacterales. Using forward genetics, we uncover novel tolerance factors in a hypertolerant isolate of the ESKAPE pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae. We find that multiple mechanisms contribute to tolerance

SUBMITTER: Cross T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11870580 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature