Subinhibitory antibiotic concentrations promote the horizontal transfer of plasmid-borne resistance genes from Klebsiellae pneumoniae to Escherichia coli.

ABSTRACT: Horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in the spread of antibiotic resistance, in which plasmid-mediated conjugation transfer is the most important mechanism. While sub-minimal inhibitory concentrations (sub-MIC) of antibiotics could promote conjugation frequency, the mechanism by which sub-MIC levels of antibiotics affect conjugation frequency is not clear. Here, we used Klebsiella pneumoniae SW1780 carrying the multi-drug resistance plasmid pSW1780-KPC as the donor strain, to investigate the effects of sub-MICs of meropenem (MEM), ciprofloxacin (CIP), cefotaxime (CTX), and amikacin (AK) on conjugational transfer of pSW1780-KPC from SW1780 to Escherichia coli J53. Our results showed that the transfer frequencies increased significantly by treating SW1780 strain wit

SUBMITTER: Ding M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9678054 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature