What do we know about plasmids carried by members of the Acinetobacter genus?

BROVEDAN, MARCO A.; CAMERANESI, MARÍA M.; LIMANSKY, ADRIANA S.; MORÁN-BARRIO, JORGELINA; MARCHIARO, PATRICIA; REPIZO, GUILLERMO D.

WORLD JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY & BIOTECHNOLOGY

SPRINGER

Año: 2020 vol. 36

0959-3993

Several Acinetobacter spp. act as opportunistic pathogens causing healthcare-associated infections worldwide, and in this respect their ability to resist antimicrobial compounds has certainly boosted up their global propagation. Acinetobacter clinical strains have demonstrated a remarkable ability to evolve and become resistant to almost all available drugs in the antimicrobial arsenal, including the last-resort carbapenem β-lactams. The dissemination of antimicrobial resistant genes (ARG), heavy metals-detoxifcation systems and other traits such as virulence factors is facilitated by mobile genetic elements(MGE) through horizontal gene transfer. Among them, plasmids have been shown to play a critical role in this genus. Despite the continuous increase of Acinetobacter plasmid sequences present in databases, there are no reports describing the basic traits carried by these MGE. To fll this gap, a broad analysis of the Acinetobacter plasmidome was performed. A search forAcinetobacter complete plasmids indicated that 905 sequences have been deposited in the NCBI-GenBank public database, of which 492 are harbored by Acinetobacter baumannii strains. Plasmid-classifcation schemes based on Rep proteins homology have so far described 23 diferent groups for A. baumannii (GR1-23), and 16 Acinetobacter Rep3 Groups (AR3G1-16) for the complete genus. Acinetobacter plasmids size ranges from 1.3 to 400 kb. Interestingly, widespread plasmids which are