Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, November 2002, p. 3401-3405, Vol. 46, No. 11
0066-4804/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.46.11.3401-3405.2002
Copyright © 2002, 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, France
Received 4 February 2002/ Returned for modification 20 May 2002/ Accepted 9 August 2002
|
|
|---|
|
|
|---|
Detailed antibiotic resistance patterns of Erwinia species is known only for seven E. persicina strains (23). Reports of Erwinia isolates as human pathogens are limited since most of the reported Erwinia isolates in clinical microbiology have been now assigned to the Pantoea group. The phytopathogen E. persicina (11) has been isolated from human urinary tract infections (23). E. chrysanthemi may cause death of human gastrointestinal cells in culture and expresses virulence determinants similar to those of other well-known human enterobacterial pathogens (9).
We have searched for ß-lactamase producers among Erwinia reference strains for two main reasons. First, some Erwinia species, like Streptomyces sp., have been reported to produce carbapenems and thus could concomitantly produce ß-lactamases (20). Second, the origin of many class A plasmid-mediated extended-spectrum ß-lactamases (ESBLs) of the CTX-M group remains unknown, whereas they are spreading worldwide. The origin of CTX-M-2 has been identified as the chromosomally encoded ß-lactamase from Kluyvera ascorbata (C. Humeniuk et al., unpublished data [GenBank accession no. CAB59824]), whereas that of CTX-M-8 is the chromosomally encoded ß-lactamase from K. georgiana (L. Poirel, P. Kämpfer, and P. Nordmann, unpublished data).
We report here the characterization of a ß-lactamase from E. persicina (representative of Erwinia species stricto sensu) that was found to be ß-lactamase positive according to results of preliminary nitrocefin testing. Its substrate profile included some extended-spectrum cephalosporins that could not have been suspected on the sole analysis of the ß-lactam resistance phenotype of the strain. Sequence analysis and kinetic parameters revealed that this plant-associated pathogen produced a class A ESBL that is distantly related to known ß-lactamases.
|
|
|---|
Antimicrobial agents and MIC determinations. The antimicrobial agents were obtained in the form of standard laboratory powders and were used immediately after their solubilization. The agents and their sources have been described elsewhere (27). Antibiotic disks (Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, Marnes-la-Coquette, France) were used for routine antibiograms (www.sfm.asso.fr).
MICs were determined by an agar dilution technique on Mueller-Hinton agar (Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur) with an inoculum of 104 CFU per spot (27). The plates were incubated at 35°C for 18 h. The MICs of ß-lactams were determined alone or in combination with a fixed concentration of clavulanic acid (2 µg/ml) or tazobactam (4 µg/ml). Interpretative criteria were those of the NCCLS (22).
Cloning experiments and analysis of recombinant plasmids. Whole-cell DNA of E. persicina 105199T was extracted as described previously (8). All enzymes used in cloning experiments were from Amersham Pharmacia Biotech (Orsay, France). Sau3AI-restricted whole-cell DNA of E. persicina 105199T was ligated into the BamHI-site of pBK-CMV phagemid (27). Recombinant plasmids were transformed by electroporation (Gene Pulser II; Bio-Rad, Ivry-sur-Seine, France) into E. coli DH10B electrocompetent cells (Life Technologies). Antibiotic-resistant colonies were selected onto Trypticase soy (TS) agar plates containing amoxicillin (50 µg/ml) and kanamycin (30 µg/ml).
Recombinant plasmid DNA was obtained from 100 ml of TS broth cultures grown overnight in the presence of amoxicillin (100 µg/ml) at 37°C. Plasmid DNAs were extracted and purified with Qiagen plasmid DNA Maxi kit (Qiagen, Courtaboeuf, France).
Plasmid content and hybridization experiments. Extraction of plasmid DNA from E. persicina 105199T was attempted as previously reported (4, 8). Southern hybridizations were performed as described previously (29) with whole-cell DNA of E. persicina 105199T and with BamHI-restricted whole-cell DNAs of the studied reference Erwinia and related bacteria. An enhanced chemiluminescence nonradioactive labeling and detection kit (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Orsay, France) was used (27) with a PCR-obtained 739-bp internal fragment of blaERP-1 as the probe (ERP-1A, 5'-ACACCACTGAACGTATTTGC-3'; ERP-1B, 5'-TGCTGGGT AAAATAGATGGC-3').
ß-Lactamase purification and biochemical parameters. A culture of E. coli DH10B(pSV-1) was grown overnight at 37°C in 4 liters of TS broth containing amoxicillin (100 µg/ml). The ß-lactamase extract was obtained after sonification, as described previously (26). It was dialyzed overnight against 20 mM Tris-HCl buffer (pH 8.0). It was loaded onto a preequilibrated Q-Sepharose column (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) in 20 mM Tris-HCl buffer (pH 8.0). The ß-lactamase activities, as determined qualitatively for each fraction by using nitrocefin hydrolysis (Oxoid, Dardilly, France), were recovered in the flowthrough and dialyzed overnight against 50 mM sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.0). The ß-lactamase was then loaded onto an S-Sepharose column preequilibrated with the same buffer and eluted with a linear NaCl gradient (0 to 1 M). The fractions containing the highest ß-lactamase activity were pooled and dialyzed overnight against 50 mM phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) prior to a 10-fold concentration (Vivaspin 10,000 MW; Sartorius, Göttingen, Germany). The protein content was measured by using the Bio-Rad DC protein assay, and the specific activities of the crude extract and of the purified ß-lactamase were compared. The specific activities of crude ß-lactamase extract and purified enzyme were determined as previously reported (27) with 100 µmol of cephalothin as the substrate. One unit of enzyme activity was defined as the activity that hydrolyzed 1 µmol of cephalothin per min. The purity of the enzymes was estimated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) (29).
To determine the cleavage site of the mature protein of the identified ß-lactamase, the purified enzyme was submitted to an Edman sequence analysis (12) (Laboratory for Protein Microsequencing, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France). Purified enzyme and marker proteins were subjected to SDS-PAGE (29). Proteins were then electrotransferred onto a polyvinylidene difluoride membrane (Immobilon-P; Millipore, Guyancourt, France) by using the Mini-Protean II transfer cell (8 by 7.3 cm; Bio-Rad) in 50 mM Tris-borate buffer (pH 8.7) at room temperature (3.5 V/cm, overnight). The membrane was then rinsed in distilled water and stained with a solution made of 0.1% Coomassie brillant blue R-250 in methanol and water (50:40 [vol/vol]). The protein band was then excised with a razor blade and allowed to air dry. The amino-terminal sequence of the mature ß-lactamases was determined with an automated Edman sequencer on a 473A model gas-phase sequencer (Applied Biosystems).
Purified enzyme and ß-lactamase extract from 100-ml culture of E. persicina were subjected to analytical isoelectric focusing, as previously described (27).
The purified ß-lactamase ERP-1 was used for kinetic measurements performed at 30°C in 100 mM sodium phosphate (pH 7.0). The rates of hydrolysis were determined with a spectrophotometer Ultrospec 2000 (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech). The wavelengths and absorption coefficients of ß-lactams have been previously referenced (27).
Km and kcat values were determined by analyzing the ß-lactam hydrolysis under initial rate conditions by using the Eadie-Hoffstee linearization of the Michaelis-Menten equation. In the cases of low Km values, Ki values were determined with cephalothin as the substrate.
Various concentrations of clavulanic acid, tazobactam, cefoxitin, and imipenem were preincubated with the enzyme for 3 min at 30°C before we tested the rate of cephalothin (100 µM) hydrolysis. The 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50) of these inhibitors were determined as the concentration of inhibitor that inhibited hydrolytic activity by 50%.
Induction studies were performed with cultures of E. persicina 105199T with 0.5 to 2 µg of cefoxitin per ml or 0.06 to 0.24 µg of imipenem per ml as ß-lactam inducers (27) and 100 µmol of cephalothin as the substrate.
DNA sequencing and protein analysis. Both strands of the cloned DNA fragment of recombinant plasmid pSV-1 were sequenced with an Applied Biosystems sequencer (ABI 377). The nucleotide sequence and the deduced protein sequence were analyzed with software available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website (www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Multiple protein sequence alignments were carried out with the program CLUSTALW (www.biomed.pasteur.fr).
Nucleotide sequence accession number. The nucleotide sequence of blaERP-1 has been assigned to the GenBank nucleotide database under the accession number no. AY077733.
|
|
|---|
![]() View larger version (63K): [in a new window] |
FIG. 1. Alignment of the ERP-1 amino acid sequence with those of the most closely related enzymes: CTX-M-9 from E. coli (28), CTX-M-8 from Enterobacter cloacae (5), KLUA-1 from K. ascorbata (GenBank accession no. CAB59824), and YENT from Yersinia enterocolitica (30). Numbering is according to Ambler et al. (1). Dashes represent identical amino acid residues. The vertical arrow is the cleavage site of the leader peptide of the mature ß-lactamase ERP-1. Structural elements characteristic of class A ß-lactamases and of serine ß-lactamases are shaded. The amino acids of the omega loop are underlined.
|
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 1. Percentage of amino acid identity of ß-lactamase ERP-1 and the most closely related class A ß-lactamasesa
|
Susceptibility testing. E. persicina 105199T was resistant to amoxicillin and of intermediate susceptibility to ticarcillin, cephalothin, and cefsulodin (Table 2). It was susceptible to the other ß-lactam antibiotics tested. Its overall susceptibility to ß-lactams was higher than that reported for seven other E. persicina strains that showed a decreased susceptibility to piperacillin, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone, ceftazidime, and cefotaxime (23). The ß-lactam resistance phenotype of E. persicina 105199T suggested the presence of a narrow-spectrum penicillinase rather than that of an ESBL.
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 2. MICs of ß-lactams for E. persicina reference strain 105199T, E. coli DH10B(pSV-1), and E. coli DH10B reference strain
|
The ß-lactam resistance pattern conferred by ERP-1, once its gene is expressed in E. coli, resembled that of the cloned chromosomally encoded ß-lactamase genes of other enterobacterial species such as C. koseri, K. cryocrescens, K. ascorbata, P. penneri, P. vulgaris, P. penneri, R. aquatilis, and S. fonticola.
Biochemical analysis of ß-lactamase ERP-1. The specific activity of the purified ß-lactamase ERP-1, measured with 100 µmol of cephalothin as the substrate, was 502 U mg of protein-1 with a 95-fold purification factor. Its purity was estimated to be >95% by SDS-PAGE analysis (data not shown).
ERP-1 had a robust hydrolysis against benzylpenicillin, amoxicillin, ticarcillin, piperacillin, cephalothin, cefuroxime, and ceftriaxone (Table 3). A significant hydrolytic activity was also observed against cefotaxime, whereas no activity was detectable against ceftazidime. The activity against cefuroxime was shared by the chromosomally encoded ß-lactamases of C. diversus, K. cryocrescens, P. vulgaris, P. penneri, R. aquatilis, and S. fonticola (2, 4, 8, 17-19, 24, 25).
|
View this table: [in a new window] |
TABLE 3. Kinetic parameters of purified ß-lactamase ERP-1a
|
Isoelectric focusing analysis showed that cultures of E. persicina 105199T and E. coli DH10B(pSV-1) gave a single and identical ß-lactamase with a pI value of 8.1. The cleavage site of the leader peptide was calculated to be between two alanine residues (between the VFA and AG motifs [Fig. 1]). This cleavage site position was confirmed by Edman sequence analysis, which determined the N-terminal end of mature ß-lactamase ERP-1 to be the motif AGDSLQ. The relative molecular mass of ERP-1 determined with the purified enzyme was ca. 28 kDa (data not shown).
Induction studies failed to detect expression induction of ß-lactamase with cultures of E. persicina 105199T. This results was consistent with the absence of a LysR-type regulator gene located upstream of blaERP-1. Thus, this chromosomally encoded class A ß-lactamase was not inducible, as opposed to the naturally occurring class A enzymes of C. koseri, P. penneri, P. vulgaris, and S. fonticola.
Conclusion. Comparison of EPR-1 sequence to those of other class A ESBLs identified several amino acid residues that may be involved in its extended spectrum of hydrolysis (18). Indeed, the serine residue at position 237 is also found in the chromosomally encoded ß-lactamases of K. ascorbata, K. cryocrescens, P. penneri, P. vulgaris, R. aquatilis, and S. fonticola. ß-Lactamase ERP-1, like the CTX-type enzyme Toho-1 (13), has glycine residues in the strand B3 (positions 228, 232, and 238) that may increase its flexibility or that allows ERP-1 to bind extended-spectrum cephalosporins. Additionally, the omega loop of ERP-1 (involved in the catalytic site of class A enzymes) is different from that of related enzymes (Fig. 1) since Thr160 may form an hydrogen bond with Thr180 as in non-ESBL enzymes (13, 18).
The present study identified a novel, chromosomally encoded ESBL from an enterobacterial species and provides further support for the view that ESBLs may be present in enterobacterial species even though they may not be suspected based upon analysis of the ß-lactam resistance profile. Although ERP-1 is not closely related to known plasmid-mediated ESBLs, it may be the progenitor of enzymes yet to be identified. This is the first identication of an ESBL from an enterobacterial species that is a natural contaminant and pathogen of fruits, plants, and vegetables. This result may provide an interesting contribution to the current debate on health risks of genetically engineered plants as a reservoir for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes.
We thank C. Bizet for the Erwinia reference strains.
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»