Project description:Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the causative agent of serious hospital- and community-associated infections. Due to the global rise in community-associated MRSA, the respective lineages are increasingly introduced into hospitals. This raises the question whether and, if so, how they adapt to this new environment. The present study was aimed at investigating how MRSA isolates of the USA300 lineage, infamous for causing infections in the general population, have adapted to the hospital environment. To this end, a collection of community- and hospital-associated USA300 isolates was compared by RNA-sequencing. Here we report that merely 460 genes were differentially expressed between these two epidemiologically distinct groups, including genes for virulence factors, oxidative stress responses and the purine, pyrimidine and fatty acid biosynthetic pathways. Differentially regulated virulence factors included leukotoxins and phenol-soluble modulins, implicated in staphylococcal escape from immune cells. We therefore investigated the ability of the studied isolates to survive internalization by human neutrophils. This showed that the community-associated isolates have the highest neutrophil-killing activity, while the hospital-associated isolates are better adapted to intra-neutrophil survival. Importantly, the latter trait protects internalized staphylococci against a challenge with antibiotics. We therefore conclude that prolonged intra-neutrophil survival serves as a relatively simple early adaptation of S. aureus USA300 to the hospital environment where antibiotic pressure is high.
Project description:This study identified and compared the bacterial diversity and the antimicrobial resistance profile of clinically relevant isolates around a newly developed hospital and university precinct
Project description:The study aimed to characterize plasmids mediating carbepenem resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae in Pretoria, South Africa. We analysed 56 K. pneumoniae isolates collected from academic hospital around Pretoria. Based on phenotypic and molecular results of these isolates, 6 representative isolates were chosen for further analysis using long reads sequencing platform. We observed multidrug resistant phenotype in all these isolates, including resistance to aminoglycosides, tetracycline, phenicol, fosfomycin, floroquinolones, and beta-lactams antibiotics. The blaOXA-48/181 and blaNDM-1/7 were manily the plasmid-mediated carbapenemases responsible for carbapenem resistance in the K. pneumoniae isolates in these academic hospitals. These carbapenemase genes were mainly associated with plasmid replicon groups IncF, IncL/M, IncA/C, and IncX3. This study showed plasmid-mediated carbapenemase spread of blaOXA and blaNDM genes mediated by conjugative plasmids in Pretoria hospitals.
2019-10-17 | GSE138949 | GEO
Project description:AusGEM Australian Environmental Citrobacter
Project description:Gene expression in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) was investigated by microarray analysis after 4 h infection with S. aureus isolated from healthy nasal carriers (n=5) and from blood (n=5) of septic patients. All bacterial isolates were spa-typed and characterized with a DNA microarray to determine the presence of virulence genes. Experiment Overall Design: Five S. aureus (designated BI-BV) from a collection of blood culture isolates (Department of Clinical Microbiology, Ryhov County Hospital, Jönköping, Sweden) from septic patients were selected. Isolates from patients with diabetes, endocarditis, drug addicts and persons with an operation within the three last years were excluded. Two S. aureus isolates were from patients with an abscess in the psoas muscle, two from patients with spondylitis and one from a wound in the neck. Another five isolates (CI-CV) were randomly selected from a collection of S. aureus obtained from healthy male nasal carriers collected in a previous study.