Identification of floR Variants Associated With a Novel Tn4371-Like Integrative and Conjugative Element in Clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolates

作者：Changrui Qian, Hongmao Liu, Jiawei Cao, Yongan Ji, Wei Lü, Junwan Lu, Aifang Li, Xinyi Zhu, Kai Shen, Haili Xu, Qianqian Chen, Wangxiao Zhou, Hongyun Lu, Hailong Lin, Xueya Zhang, Qiaoling Li, Xi Lin, Kewei Li, Teng Xu, Mei Zhu, Qiyu Bao, Hailin Zhang · 发表于：Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.3389/fcimb.2021.685068 · 被引用次数：14 · 研究领域：Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria、Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing、Bacteriophages and microbial interactions

Florfenicol is widely used to control respiratory diseases and intestinal infections in food animals. However, there are increasing reports about florfenicol resistance of various clinical pathogens. floR is a key resistance gene that mediates resistance to florfenicol and could spread among different bacteria. Here, we investigated the prevalence of floR in 430 Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from human clinical samples and identified three types of floR genes (designated floR , floR-T1 and floR-T2 ) in these isolates, with floR-T1 the most prevalent (5.3%, 23/430). FloR-T2 was a novel floR variant identified in this study, and exhibited less identity with other FloR proteins than FloRv. Moreover, floR-T1 and floR-T2 identified in P. aeruginosa strain TL1285 were functionally active and located on multi-drug resistance region of a novel incomplete Tn 4371 -like integrative and conjugative elements (ICE) in the chromosome. The expression of the two floR variants could be induced by florfenicol or chloramphenicol. These results indicated that the two floR variants played an essential role in the host’s resistance to amphenicol and the spreading of these floR variants might be related with the Tn 4371 family ICE.