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Volume 169, Issue 7

The distribution of fitness effects of plasmid pOXA-48 in clinical enterobacteria Open Access

This article is part of the Microbial Evolution collection.

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria is a major public health problem. The main route for AMR acquisition in clinically important bacteria is the horizontal transfer of plasmids carrying resistance genes. AMR plasmids allow bacteria to survive antibiotics, but they also entail physiological alterations in the host cell. Multiple studies over the last few years have indicated that these alterations can translate into a fitness cost when antibiotics are absent. However, due to technical limitations, most of these studies are based on analysing new associations between plasmids and bacteria generated , and we know very little about the effects of plasmids in their native bacterial hosts. In this study, we used a CRISPR-Cas9-tool to selectively cure plasmids from clinical enterobacteria to overcome this limitation. Using this approach, we were able to study the fitness effects of the carbapenem resistance plasmid pOXA-48 in 35 pOXA-48-carrying isolates recovered from hospitalized patients. Our results revealed that pOXA-48 produces variable effects across the collection of wild-type enterobacterial strains naturally carrying the plasmid, ranging from fitness costs to fitness benefits. Importantly, the plasmid was only associated with a significant fitness reduction in four out of 35 clones, and produced no significant changes in fitness in the great majority of isolates. Our results suggest that plasmids produce neutral fitness effects in most native bacterial hosts, helping to explain the great prevalence of plasmids in natural microbial communities.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): antimicrobial resistance , carbapenemase , conjugation , DFE , enterobacteria , Plasmid cost , plasmids and pOXA-48
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • European Union NextGeneration (Award FJC2021-046751-I)
    • Principle Award Recipient: AriadnaFernandez-Calvet
  • H2020 European Research Council (Award 757440-PLASREVOLUTION)
    • Principle Award Recipient: AlvaroSan Millan
  • European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR (Award Project PCI2021-122062-2A MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033)
    • Principle Award Recipient: AlvaroSan Millan
© 2023 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2023-07-28
2024-05-04
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The distribution of fitness effects of plasmid pOXA-48 in clinical enterobacteria
Microbiology 169, 001369 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001369
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001369
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