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VanD-Type Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis

Florence Depardieu,¹ Mathias Kolbert,^1, Hendrik Pruul,² Jan Bell,³ and Patrice Courvalin^1*

Unité des Agents Antibactériens, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France,¹ Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide,² Department of Infectious Diseases, Women's and Children's Hospital, North Adelaide, Australia³

Received 24 February 2004/ Returned for modification 19 April 2004/ Accepted 13 May 2004

Enterococcus faecium clinical isolates A902 and BM4538, which were resistant to relatively high levels of vancomycin (128 and 64 µg/ml, respectively) and to low levels of teicoplanin (4 µg/ml), and Enterococcus faecalis clinical isolates BM4539 and BM4540, which were resistant to moderate levels of vancomycin (16 µg/ml) and susceptible to teicoplanin (0.25 µg/ml), were studied. They were constitutively resistant by synthesis of peptidoglycan precursors ending with D-alanyl-D-lactate and harbored a chromosomal vanD gene cluster which was not transferable by conjugation to other enterococci. VanX_D activity, which is not required in the absence of D-Ala-D-Ala, was low in the four strains, although none of the conserved residues was mutated; and the constitutive VanY_D activity in the membrane fractions was inhibited by penicillin G. The mutations E₁₃G in the region of D-alanine:D-alanine ligase (which is implicated in D-Ala1 binding in A902) and S₃₁₉N of the serine involved in ATP binding in BM4538 and a 7-bp insertion at different locations in BM4539 and BM4540 (which led to putative truncated proteins) led to the production of an impaired enzyme and accounted for the lack of D-Ala-D-Ala-containing peptidoglycan precursors. The same 7-bp insertion in vanS_D of BM4539 and BM4540 and a 1-bp deletion in vanS_D of A902, which in each case led to a putative truncated and presumably nonfunctional protein, could account for the constitutive resistance. Strain BM4538, with a functional VanS_D, had a G₁₄₀E mutation in VanR_D that could be responsible for constitutive glycopeptide resistance. This would represent the first example of constitutive van gene expression due to a mutation in the structural gene for a VanR transcriptional activator. Study of these four additional strains that could be distinguished on the basis of their various assortments of mutations confirmed that all VanD-type strains isolated so far have mutations in the ddl housekeeping gene and in the acquired vanS_D or vanR_D gene that lead to constitutive resistance to vancomycin.

Present address: Mathias Kolbert, Bioscientia, 55218 Ingelheim, Germany.

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