Intercontinental spread of promiscuous mercury‐resistance transposons in environmental bacteria

We demonstrate that horizontal spread of mer operons similar to worldwide spread of antibiotic‐resistance genes in medically important bacteria occurred in bacteria found in ores, soils and waters. The spread was mediated by different transposons and plasmids. Some of the spreading transposons were...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecular microbiology 1997-04, Vol.24 (2), p.321-329
Main Authors: Yurieva, Olga, Kholodii, Gennady, Minakhin, Leonid, Gorlenko, Zhosephine, Kalyaeva, Eza, Mindlin, Sofia, Nikiforov, Vadim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacterial Proteins - genetics
Base Sequence
Carrier Proteins - genetics
Cation Transport Proteins
DNA Transposable Elements
DNA-Binding Proteins - genetics
Drug Resistance, Microbial - genetics
Gram-Negative Bacteria - genetics
Gram-Negative Bacteria - metabolism
Membrane Proteins - genetics
Mercury - metabolism
Mercury - toxicity
Molecular Sequence Data
Operon
Plasmids - genetics
Recombination, Genetic
Sequence Alignment
Soil Microbiology
Water Microbiology
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Summary:We demonstrate that horizontal spread of mer operons similar to worldwide spread of antibiotic‐resistance genes in medically important bacteria occurred in bacteria found in ores, soils and waters. The spread was mediated by different transposons and plasmids. Some of the spreading transposons were damaged in different ways but this did not prevent their further spread. Certain transposons are mosaics composed of segments belonging to distinct sequence types. These mosaics arose as a result of homologous and site‐specific recombination. Our data suggest that the mercury‐resistance operons of Gram‐negative environmental bacteria can be considered as a worldwide population composed of a relatively small number of distinct recombining clones shared, at least partially, by environmental and clinical bacteria.
ISSN:0950-382X
1365-2958
DOI:10.1046/j.1365-2958.1997.3261688.x