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Volume 8, Issue 5

Profiling the plasmid conjugation potential of urinary Open Access

Abstract

is often associated with urinary tract infection (UTI). Antibiotic resistance in is an ongoing challenge in managing UTI. Extrachromosomal elements – plasmids – are vectors for clinically relevant traits, such as antibiotic resistance, with conjugation being one of the main methods for horizontal propagation of plasmids in bacterial populations. Targeting of conjugation components has been proposed as a strategy to curb the spread of plasmid-borne antibiotic resistance. Understanding the types of conjugative systems present in urinary isolates is fundamental to assessing the viability of this strategy. In this study, we profile two well-studied conjugation systems (F-type and P-type) in the draft genomes of 65 urinary isolates of obtained from the bladder urine of adult women with and without UTI-like symptoms. Most of these isolates contained plasmids and we found that conjugation genes were abundant/ubiquitous, diverse and often associated with IncF plasmids. To validate conjugation of these urinary plasmids, the plasmids from two urinary isolates, UMB1223 (predicted to have F-type genes) and UMB1284 (predicted to have P-type genes), were transferred by conjugation into the K-12 strain MG1655. Overall, the findings of this study support the notion that care should be taken in targeting any individual component of a urinary isolate’s conjugation system, given the inherent mechanistic redundancy, gene diversity and different types of conjugation systems in this population.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): conjugation , Escherichia coli , genome , incompatibility group , plasmids and urinary tract
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • National Institutes of Health (Award R01DK104718)
    • Principle Award Recipient: AlanJ Wolfe
© 2022 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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2022-05-10
2024-04-25
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Profiling the plasmid conjugation potential of urinary Escherichia coli
M Gen 8, 000814 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000814
/content/journal/mgen/10.1099/mgen.0.000814
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