Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2000, p. 1470-1478, Vol. 44, No. 6
0066-4804/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Service de Bactériologie-Virologie, Hôpital de Bicêtre, Assistance Publique/Hôpitaux de Paris, Faculté de Médecine Paris-Sud, 94275 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre cedex, France
Received 14 September 1999/Returned for modification 24 January 2000/Accepted 17 March 2000
A naturally occurring AmpC
-lactamase (cephalosporinase) gene
was cloned from the Hafnia alvei 1 clinical isolate and
expressed in Escherichia coli. The deduced AmpC
-lactamase (ACC-2) had a pI of 8 and a relative molecular mass of 37 kDa and showed 50 and 47% amino acid identity with the
chromosome-encoded AmpCs from Serratia marcescens and
Providentia stuartii, respectively. It had 94% amino acid
identity with the recently described plasmid-borne cephalosporinase
ACC-1 from Klebsiella pneumoniae, suggesting the
chromosomal origin of ACC-1. The hydrolysis constants
(kcat and Km) showed
that ACC-2 was a peculiar cephalosporinase, since it significantly
hydrolyzed cefpirome. Once its gene was cloned and expressed in
E. coli (pDEL-1), ACC-2 conferred resistance to ceftazidime
and cefotaxime but also an uncommon reduced susceptibility to
cefpirome. A divergently transcribed ampR gene with an
overlapping promoter compared with ampC
(blaACC-2) was identified in H. alvei 1, encoding an AmpR protein that shared 64% amino acid
identity with the closest AmpR protein from P. stuartii.
-Lactamase induction experiments showed that the ampC
gene was repressed in the absence of ampR and was activated
when cefoxitin or imipenem was added as an inducer. From H. alvei 1 cultures that expressed an inducible-cephalosporinase phenotype, several ceftazidime- and cefpirome-cross-resistant H. alvei 1 mutants were obtained upon selection on cefpirome- or
ceftazidime-containing plates, and H. alvei 1 DER, a
ceftazidime-resistant mutant, stably overproduced cephalosporinase.
Transformation of H. alvei 1 DER or E. coli
JRG582 (ampDE mutant) harboring ampC and
ampR from H. alvei 1 with a recombinant plasmid
containing ampD from E. coli resulted in a
decrease in the MIC of
-lactam and recovery of an inducible
phenotype for H. alvei 1 DER. Thus, AmpR and AmpD proteins
may regulate biosynthesis of the H. alvei cephalosporinase
similarly to other enterobacterial cephalosporinases.
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