A Type I Restriction-Modification System Associated with Enterococcus faecium Subspecies Separation

• Wenwen Huo ^[1] ; Hannah M. Adams ^[1] ; Cristian Trejo ^[1] ; Rohit Badia ^[1] ; Kelli L. Palmer ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Texas at Dallas

     University of Texas at Dallas

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Applied and Environmental Microbiology, ISSN 0099-2240, Vol. 85, Nº 2, 2019
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Enterococcus faecium is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections around the world. Rising antibiotic resistance in certain E. faecium lineages leaves fewer treatment options. The overarching aim of this work was to determine whether restriction-modification (R-M) systems contribute to the structure of the E. faecium species, wherein hospital-epidemic and non-hospital-epidemic isolates have distinct evolutionary histories and highly resolved clade structures. R-M provides bacteria with a type of innate immunity to horizontal gene transfer (HGT). We identified a type I R-M system that is enriched in the hospital-epidemic clade and determined that it is active for DNA modification activity and significantly impacts HGT. Overall, this work is important because it provides a mechanism for the observed clade structure of E. faecium as well as a mechanism for facilitated gene exchange among hospital-epidemic E. faecium isolates.