INVESTIGADORES
TORRES TEJERIZO Gonzalo Arturo
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Analysis of 19 sequenced plasmids from an Acinetobacter baumannii collection isolated from Argentinean hospitals
Autor/es:
ILEANA SALTO; GONZALO A. TORRES TEJERIZO; DANIEL WIBBERG; ANDREAS SCHLÜTER; MARIANO PISTORIO
Reunión:
Conferencia; International Plasmid Biology Conference 2014; 2014
Resumen:
Acinetobacter baumannii is a gram-negative non-fermentative
opportunistic pathogen found in intensive care units. It is one of the
most frequent pathogens implicated in nosocomial infections whose
treatment may present difficulties since its huge capacity to acquire
different antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. Nowadays, new antibiotics
therapies are being search due the presence of multi and pan-resistant
bacteria. Resistance determinants can be incorporated by horizontal gene
transfer, where plasmids play a very important role as a main
evolutionary mechanism to transfer genetic information.
In this work, we studied a plasmid collection from 64 different
Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from five different Buenos Aires?
hospitals. For this purpose, plasmids were isolated, purified and
sequenced using MiSeq-Illumina technology. After assembly was done, we
could identify 40 contigs. 23 of them corresponded to 19 complete
replicons. Sizes were variable and this was consistent to the plasmids
profiles observed. We could recognize 321 open reading frames. 93% of
them, had homologues genes in GenBank database, 54% of known and 42 % of
unknown function. Only a 7% of predicted ORFs would correspond to new
proteins.Genes associated with plasmid replication, segregation and
maintenance and those associated with resistance to antibiotic, heavy
metals and disinfectants were found among genes with a known function.
Here we describe and classify all the information contained in this
replicons. Further analyses were made to identify isolates that harbor
an Ag/Cu metal resistance cluster. This isolates showed resistance when
grown in the presence of these compounds.This work was carried out in
order to compare and understand how these microorganisms are able to
survive, prevail and cause severe infections, even though the continuous
selection pressure conditions. We believe that understanding how these
resistance plasmids can be transferred and maintained between
microorganisms will help us to eradicate resistance dissemination within
hospital environments.