Resumen de A Type I Restriction-Modification System Associated with Enterococcus faecium Subspecies Separation
Wenwen Huo, Hannah M. Adams, Cristian Trejo, Rohit Badia, Kelli Palmer
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.
