Project description:Conjugative plasmids, major vehicles for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes, often contain multiple toxin‒antitoxin (TA) systems. However, the physiological functions of TA systems remain obscure. By studying TA families commonly found on colistin-resistant IncI2 mcr-1-bearing plasmids, we discovered that the HicAB TA, acts as a crucial addiction module to increase horizontal plasmid‒plasmid competition.
Project description:Background: The rapid evolution and dissemination of mobilized colistin resistance gene (mcr) family has revealed as a severe threat to the global public health. Nevertheless, dramatic reduction in the prevalence of mcr-1, the major member of mcr family, was observed after the withdrawal of colistin in animal fodder in China since 2017, demonstrating that colistin acts as a selective stress to promote the dissemination of mcr-1. As the second largest lineage, mcr-3 was firstly discovered in 2017 and has been identified from numerous sources. However, whether the spreading of mcr-3 is driven by colistin remains unknown. Methods: To this end, we investigated the global prevalence of mcr-3 from 2005 to 2022 by an up-to-date systematic review, along with a nation-wide epidemiological study to establish the change of mcr-3 prevalence in China before and after 2017. To investigate the fitness cost imposed by MCR-3 upon bacterial host, in vitro and in vivo competitive assays were employed, along with morphological study and fluorescent observation. Moreover, by replacing non-optimal codons with optimal codons, synonymous mutations were introduced into the 5’-coding region of mcr-3 to study mechanisms accounting for the distinct fitness cost conferred by MCR-1 and MCR-3. Furthermore, by combining AlphaFold and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, we provided a complete characterization on the putative lipid A binding pocket localized at the linker domain of MCR-3. Crucially, inhibitors targeting at the putative binding pocket of MCR-1 or MCR-3 were identified from small molecules library using the pipeline of virtual screening. Findings: The global prevalence of mcr-3 increased continuously from 2005 to 2022. The average prevalence was 0.18% during 2005-2014 and rapidly increased to 3.41% during 2020-2022. The prevalence of mcr-3 in China increased from 0.79% in 2016 to 5.87% in 2019. We found that the fitness of mcr-3-bearing E. coli and empty plasmid control was comparable but higher than that of mcr-1-positive strain. Although the putative lipid A binding pocket of MCR-3 was similar to that of in MCR-1, mcr-3 occupies remarkable codon bias at the 5’-end of coding region that disrupted the stability of mRNA, further reduced its protein expression in E. coli, resulting in the low fitness burden of bacterial host. Moreover, the 5’-end codon usage frequency appeared as a critical factor related with the evolution of mcr family. Furthermore, based on the similar lipid A binding pocket among MCR family protein, we identified three novel MCR inhibitors targeting at such pocket by screening from small-molecule library, which effectively restored the colistin susceptibility of mcr-bearing E. coli. Interpretation: For the first time, we found that the prevalence of mcr-3 increased continuously during 2016-2019 in China, demonstrating that the withdrawal of colistin in husbandry failed to prevent the dissemination of mcr-3. Our study evidenced that the 5’-end codon bias appeared as a crucial regulator upon the fitness cost conferred by horizontally transferred genes. Most importantly, the putative lipid A binding pocket verified from current study was a promising target site for designing inhibitors against mcr-positive strains.
Project description:This study aims to determine the epidemiology of Enterobacteriaceae resistant to antibiotics of last resort in pregnant women in labour at a tertiary hospital, Pretoria, South Africa. Rectal swabs shall be used to screen for colonisation with CRE and colistin-resistant Enterobacteriales in pregnant women during labour. Carbapenem and colistin-resistant Enterobacterales can cause the following infections: bacteraemia; nosocomial pneumonia; urinary tract infections, and intra-abdominal infections. Due to limited treatment options, infections caused by these multidrug-resistant organisms are associated with a mortality rate of 40-50%. Screening for colonisation of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and colistin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae will help implement infection and prevention measures to limit the spread of these multidrug-resistant organisms.
2022-07-20 | GSE208573 | GEO
Project description:mobile colistin resistant gene mcr-1 positive E. coli
Project description:Plasmids are one of the important mobile genetic elements in bacterial evolution. In this study, to evaluate the generality of the impact of plasmid carriage on host cell between different plasmids, we compared the response of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 to harboring three natural plasmids; RP4 (IncP-1, multidrug resistance, 60,099-bp), pCAR1 (IncP-7, carbazole-degradative, 200,231-bp) and NAH7 (IncP-9, naphthalene-degradative, 82,232-bp). We prepared two sets of plasmid-harboring strains from independent conjugation events to elucidate the reproducibility of the impact of the plasmid carriage. As results, the fitness was reduced by the carriage of RP4 and pCAR1 in liquid medium, while it was unaffected or even improved for NAH7-harboring strains. RP4-harboring KT2440 formed smaller colonies than the plasmid-free strain on solid medium (1.6% agar). The host cells were elongated by the carriage of the all plasmids, respectively. Copy number determination by quantitative PCR showed that the amount of each plasmid DNA in the host cell did not differed drastically. Whole genome resequencing showed that 13 SNPs (RP4), 24 SNPs (pCAR1) and 5 SNPs (NAH7) were the total differences between the two substrains for each plasmid-harboring strains. Transcriptome analyses showed that the impact of plasmid carriage was constantly larger in RP4-harboring strain than the other two plasmid-harboring strains. Genes involved in metal acquisition and metabolism were commonly affected by the carriage of the three plasmid. Indeed, plasmid-harboring strains showed greater growth inhibition than plasmid-free strains under iron-limiting condition. This feature could become future target to control plasmid spreading.