Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Xu, Congrui
• Rao, Jing
• Xie, Yuqing
• Lu, Jiajun
• Li, Zhiqiang
• Dong, Changjiang
• Wang, Lianrong
• Jiang, Jinghong
• Chen, Chao
• Chen, Shi
• Gao, Beile

Titel

The DNA Phosphorothioation Restriction-Modification System Influences the Antimicrobial Resistance of Pathogenic Bacteria

Ist Teil von

• Microbiology spectrum, 2023-02, Vol.11 (1), p.e0350922-e0350922

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Society for Microbiology

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Bacterial defense barriers, such as DNA methylation-associated restriction-modification (R-M) and the CRISPR-Cas system, play an important role in bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Recently, a novel R-M system based on DNA phosphorothioate (PT) modification has been shown to be widespread in the kingdom of as well as . However, the potential role of the PT R-M system in bacterial AMR remains unclear. In this study, we explored the role of PT R-Ms in AMR with a series of common clinical pathogenic bacteria. By analyzing the distribution of AMR genes related to mobile genetic elements (MGEs), it was shown that the presence of PT R-M effectively reduced the distribution of horizontal gene transfer (HGT)-derived AMR genes in the genome, even in the bacteria that did not tend to acquire AMR genes by HGT. In addition, unique gene variation analysis based on pangenome analysis and MGE prediction revealed that the presence of PT R-M could suppress HGT frequency. Thus, this is the first report showing that the PT R-M system has the potential to repress HGT-derived AMR gene acquisition by reducing the HGT frequency. In this study, we demonstrated the effect of DNA PT modification-based R-M systems on horizontal gene transfer of AMR genes in pathogenic bacteria. We show that there is no apparent association between the genetic background of the strains harboring PT R-Ms and the number of AMR genes or the kinds of gene families. The strains equipped with PT R-M harbor fewer plasmid-derived, prophage-derived, or integrating mobile genetic element (iMGE)-related AMR genes and have a lower HGT frequency, but the degree of inhibition varies among different bacteria. In addition, compared with Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae prefers to acquire MGE-derived AMR genes, and there is no coevolution between PT R-M clusters and bacterial core genes.