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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, April 2007, p. 1304-1309, Vol. 51, No. 4
0066-4804/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AAC.01058-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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CHU Clermont-Ferrand, Centre de Biologie, Laboratoire de Bactériologie Clinique, Clermont-Ferrand F-63003, France,1 Université Clermont 1, UFR Médecine, Laboratoire de Bactériologie, EA3844, Clermont-Ferrand F-63001, France,2 CHU Clermont-Ferrand, Hôtel-Dieu, Service d'Hématologie Clinique, Clermont-Ferrand F-63003, France,3 CHU Clermont-Ferrand, Hôtel-Dieu, Service de Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales, Clermont-Ferrand F-63003, France4
Received 22 August 2006/ Returned for modification 26 October 2006/ Accepted 2 January 2007
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However, the intensive use of these molecules was quickly followed by the evolution of TEM- and SHV-type ß-lactamases. Extended-spectrum ß-lactamases (ESBLs) were identified during the 1980s (14, 28, 29). They differed from the TEM and SHV penicillinases by a few amino acid substitutions which confer hydrolytic activity against oxyimino cephalosporins. However, these ESBLs remained susceptible to clavulanate and tazobactam. A synergy picture between a disk containing an oxyimino cephalosporin and a disk containing a penicillin-clavulanate combination allows their detection (8).
Starting from 1990, the clinical use of combinations of penicillins and ß-lactamase inhibitors was followed by the emergence of TEM-type enzymes resistant to inhibitors (2). These enzymes, designated inhibitor-resistant TEM (IRT) enzymes, were inactive against all cephalosporins (5).
Since the middle of the 1990s, a third subgroup of TEM enzymes has emerged that combines the IRT- and ESBL-type substitutions. These new ß-lactamases, called complex mutant TEM (CMT) enzymes, have been identified in different species of Enterobacteriaceae, including Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Enterobacter aerogenes (11, 21-24, 27). These enzymes confer different levels of resistance to clavulanic acid and to oxyimino cephalosporins, depending on the harbored mutations.
We report here two isolates of E. coli, obtained from the same patient, with combined resistance to penicillin-clavulanate combinations and to ceftazidime.
(This work was presented in part at the 25th Réunion Interdiciplinaire de Chimiothérapie Anti-Infectieuse [RICAI], Paris, France, December 2005.)
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(Novagen, Darmstadt, Germany) and E. coli BL21(DE3) (Novagen) were used for cloning experiments (25), and E. coli C600 was used for mating-out assays. Plasmid pBK-CMV (Stratagene, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) was used for the initial cloning experiments, and a modified pET9a plasmid (20) was used for overexpression of the ß-lactamase-encoding genes. Genomic typing. The clinical isolates E. coli CF1295 and CF1179 were compared by enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence PCR (ERIC2-PCR) as previously described (10).
Susceptibility to ß-lactams. Antibiotic-containing disks were used for antibiotic susceptibility testing by the disk diffusion assay (Sanofi-Diagnostics Pasteur, Marnes la Coquette, France). MICs were determined by a dilution method on Mueller-Hinton agar (Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, Marnes la Coquette, France), with an inoculum of 104 CFU per spot, and were interpreted according to the guidelines of the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (7). The antibiotics were provided as powders by Glaxo Smith Kline (amoxicillin, ticarcillin, cefuroxime, ceftazidime, and clavulanic acid), Wyeth Laboratories (piperacillin and tazobactam), Eli Lilly (cephalothin), Roussel-Uclaf (cefotaxime and cefpirome), Bristol-Myers-Squibb (aztreonam and cefepime), and Merck Sharp and Dohme-Chibret (cefoxitin and imipenem).
Isoelectric focusing. Isoelectric focusing of ß-lactamases was performed with polyacrylamide gels containing ampholytes with a pH range of 3.5 to 10.0, as previously described (3), with TEM-39 (pI 5.2), TEM-12 (pI 5.25), TEM-1 (pI 5.4), and TEM-2 (pI 5.6) as standards.
Transfer experiments. Plasmids carrying resistance genes were directly transferred by mating donor strains with rifampin-resistant mutants of E. coli C600 obtained in vitro as recipient strains at 37°C on solid Mueller-Hinton medium (25). Transconjugants were selected on agar containing rifampin (300 µg/ml) and ceftazidime (0.5 µg/ml).
When mating-out experiments were negative, plasmid DNA was extracted and purified by alkaline lysis according to the Qiafilter protocol (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany). Electroporation of plasmid DNA into E. coli DH5
was performed according to the manufacturer's instructions (Bio-Rad, Richmond, CA). Transformants were selected on agar containing ceftazidime (0.5 µg/ml).
Cloning experiments.
The TEM enzyme-encoding genes, including the promoter region, were cloned into pBK-CMV and a modified plasmid vector, pET-9a, as previously described (23). The recombinant plasmids obtained were transformed into E. coli strains DH5
and BL21(DE3), respectively. E. coli clones were selected on Mueller-Hinton agar supplemented with 30 µg/ml kanamycin and 0.5 µg/ml ceftazidime.
Sequencing of DNAs amplified by PCR.
Direct sequencing was performed on three independent PCR products, which were obtained from the transconjugant E. coli C600 and the recombinant E. coli DH5
strains. These PCR products were sequenced by dideoxy chain termination on both strands with an Applied Biosystems sequencer (ABI 377) (26). The nucleotide and deduced protein sequences were analyzed using software available at the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).
Overexpression and purification of ß-lactamases. TEM-producing E. coli BL21(DE3) clones were used to overproduce the TEM-type ß-lactamases as previously described (6). Bacteria were disrupted by sonication. TEM purification was carried out, as previously described (23), by ion-exchange chromatography with a Q Sepharose column (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Orsay, France) and gel filtration chromatography with a Superose 12 column (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech), using a fast-protein liquid chromatography system. The total protein concentration was estimated by the Bio-Rad protein assay (Bio-Rad, Richmond, CA), with bovine serum albumin (Sigma Chemical Co.) used as a standard. The level of purity was estimated to be >97% by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (3, 17).
Determination of ß-lactamase kinetic parameters kcat and Km and of IC50s. The Michaelis constant (Km) and catalytic activity (kcat) were determined with purified extracts, using a computerized microacidimetric method (16). The 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50s) were determined for clavulanic acid and tazobactam, as previously described (3), with 100 µM benzylpenicillin as the reporter substrate.
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers. The nucleotide sequences of the blaTEM-151 and blaTEM-152 genes have been assigned the accession numbers DQ834729 and DQ834728, respectively, in the GenBank nucleotide sequence database.
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The isolates E. coli CF1295 and CF1179 harbored high levels of resistance against the penicillins, alone or in combination with clavulanate, and were susceptible to cefuroxime, cefoxitin, aztreonam, cefotaxime, cefepime, cefpirome, and imipenem. Isolate CF1179 was resistant to ceftazidime (MIC, 64 µg/ml), whereas isolate CF1295 had a ceftazidime MIC of 4 µg/ml. The double-disk synergy test, which was performed with a 30-mm interdisk distance, was positive for E. coli CF1179 but negative for E. coli CF1295. However, low synergy was observed for the latter isolate when the interdisk distance was decreased to 20 mm.
Isoelectric focusing and transfer experiment. The clinical isolates produced two ß-lactamases each, with pI values of 5.3 and 5.4 for isolate CF1295 and 5.4 and 5.7 for isolate CF1179. These values were compatible with those of TEM-derived enzymes. However, only the enzyme with a pI of 5.4 was transferred by mating-out experiments, using 32 µg/ml of amoxicillin instead of 0.5 µg/ml of ceftazidime, and it conferred a penicillinase-type resistance phenotype to the corresponding transconjugants, TC1295 and TC1179.
Two transformants, TF1295 and TF1179, exhibited resistance phenotypes similar to those of their parental strains, CF1295 and CF1179, respectively. They produced only one beta-lactamase each, with a pI of 5.3 for transformant TF1295 and of 5.7 for transformant TF1179.
PCR, cloning, and DNA sequencing. PCR experiments and direct DNA sequencing using TEM-A and TEM-B2 primers confirmed the presence of blaTEM-1 in the two transconjugants producing the enzyme with a pI of 5.4. Cloning experiments were performed by PCR with the pBK-CMV plasmid vector to characterize the genes encoding the two other enzymes. Two clones, designated CL1295 and CL1179, produced one ß-lactamase each, with pIs of 5.3 and 5.7, respectively, and harbored resistance phenotypes similar to those of their parental isolates, CF1295 and CF1179, respectively.
The blaTEM nucleic acid sequences revealed two new blaTEM genes corresponding to the ß-lactamases with pIs of 5.3 (blaTEM-151) and 5.7 (blaTEM-152) (Table 1). They both presented a new promoter region which had a 9-bp deletion between positions 32 and 41, a T53A substitution, and a G162T substitution according to the Sutcliffe numbering system (30) (Fig. 1). In the coding region, the two genes differed from blaTEM-1a by the same silent mutations, namely, A346G, C436T, T682C, and G925A. This pattern of silent mutations is characteristic of blaTEM-1f (19).
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TABLE 1. Amino acid substitutions in TEM-151, TEM-152, TEM-28, TEM-29, and TEM-36 compared with TEM-1 sequence
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FIG. 1. Nucleotide sequences of promoters Pc and Pd of blaTEM-151 and blaTEM-152 compared with those of promoters P3, Pa/Pb, and P4. The promoter sequences are numbered according to the Sutcliffe numbering system (30). The 35 and 10 sequences of each promoter are boxed. Bold letters indicate mutations, deleted nucleotides are indicated by dashes, and the start codon is underlined.
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ß-Lactam MICs.
The clinical strain CF1179 and the corresponding E. coli DH5
clone, CL1179, presented higher levels of resistance to a piperacillin-tazobactam combination (16 to 128 versus 2 to 4 µg/ml), ceftazidime (64 to 512 versus 4 to 8 µg/ml), aztreonam (8 to 64 versus 2 µg/ml), and cefepime (2 to 16 versus 0.5 µg/ml) than did the clinical strain CF1295 and its corresponding clone, CL1295.
E. coli DH5
clones which produced the enzymes TEM-151 and TEM-152 and their parental enzymes (the ESBLs TEM-28 and TEM-29 and the IRT enzyme TEM-36) from the same genetic background were used to microbiologically compare the related TEM-encoding genes. The MICs of ß-lactams alone were similar for the TEM-151- and TEM-152-producing clones and the clones producing the corresponding parental ESBLs (Table 2), with the exception of the MICs of cefotaxime for the TEM-152- and TEM-28-producing clones (0.25 versus 4 µg/ml). The MICs of penicillin-clavulanate combinations were higher for the TEM-151- and TEM-152-producing clones than for those producing the corresponding ESBLs. These MICs were closely related to those for the clone producing the IRT enzyme TEM-36 (512 to 2,048 versus >2,048 µg/ml). In contrast, the TEM-151-producing clone exhibited a lower resistance level to piperacillin-tazobactam than those for clones producing TEM-152 and TEM-36 (2 versus 128 and >2,048 µg/ml).
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TABLE 2. MICs of ß-lactam antibiotics for E. coli CF1295, E. coli CF1179, and the recombinants E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-151), E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-152), E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-29), E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-28), E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-36), E. coli DH5 (pBK-TEM-1), and E. coli DH5 (pBK-CMV)
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TABLE 3. Kinetic parameters of ß-lactamases TEM-151, TEM-152, TEM-29, TEM-28, TEM-36, and TEM-1a
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TEM-152 was 2- to 50-fold more resistant to ß-lactamase inhibitors than was TEM-151 (IC50, 0.4 to 1 versus 0.17 to 0.27 µM) (Table 4). The IC50s of clavulanic acid for TEM-151 and TEM-152 were 2- to 50-fold higher than those for TEM-1, TEM-28, and TEM-29 (0.17 to 1 versus 0.02 to 0.08 µM) but 20- to 120-fold lower than that for TEM-36 (0.17 to 1 versus 20.5 µM). Similar results were obtained with tazobactam, which was 2- to 20-fold more efficient against TEM-1, TEM-28, and TEM-29 and 6- to 10-fold more efficient against TEM-36 than against TEM-151 and TEM-152.
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TABLE 4. IC50s of clavulanic acid and tazobactam for TEM-151, TEM-152, TEM-28, TEM-29, TEM-36, and TEM-1
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The new promoter region presents a 9-bp deletion between positions 32 and 41 (Fig. 1). This deletion allows the association of the 35 sequence of the Pa promoter with a new 10 promoter sequence, 5'-TACGAT-3', which seems closer to the consensus sequence 5'-TATAAT-3' than to the classical 10 sequence of the Pa promoter (5'-TACGCT-3') (12). We suggest calling this new promoter Pc. This deletion also leads to a modification of the distance between the 35 and 10 sequences of the Pb promoter, which are separated by only 9 bp, which is incompatible with a functional promoter (12). However, the sequence 5'-GATAAT-3', which is close to the consensus sequence 5'-TATAAT-3' and separated from the 35 sequence of promoter Pb by the ideal distance of 17 bp, may be a functional 10 sequence. The 35 sequence of the Pb promoter and this novel 10 sequence may form a new promoter, Pd. Lastly, this promoter region also presents the substitution G162T, which leads to the promoter P4 (18), and a new substitution, T53A.
Overall, the 5' regions of the two new blaTEM genes may contain three promoters, namely, Pc, Pd, and P4, and thereby confer a high level of transcription.
The gene blaTEM-151 also harbored the mutation C1047G, which led to the substitution Ala284Gly. TEM-151 is the first described TEM-type ß-lactamase which harbors this substitution. Ala284 is located at a distance from the active site, on helix h11, and its side chain is oriented toward the solvent. Thus, the Ala284Gly mutation probably does not affect the hydrolytic activity.
As previously observed for other complex mutants belonging to the TEM subgroup (11, 21-24, 27), TEM-151 and TEM-152 were slightly less efficient against oxyimino-ß-lactams than the corresponding ESBLs TEM-28 and TEM-29 (kcat, 1 to 16 versus 2.1 to 64 s1). However, they both significantly hydrolyzed ceftazidime, especially TEM-152, as assessed by their hydrolytic activities (kcat, 5 to 16 s1). These two ß-lactamases behaved like ESBLs with regard to their hydrolytic activities. The presence of the additional Glu240Lys substitution in TEM-152 may explain the higher level of activity observed for ceftazidime and the lower Km values observed for aztreonam, cefotaxime, and cefepime (15).
TEM-151 and TEM-152 were also less resistant to inhibitors than TEM-36, which presented the same IRT substitutions at positions 69 and 276. Such a loss of resistance to inhibitors was previously observed for all CMT-type ß-lactamases that presented ESBL hydrolytic activity (11, 22-24, 27). However, they were both more resistant to clavulanic acid and tazobactam than TEM-28 and TEM-29 and even the parental enzyme TEM-1. Their diminished susceptibility to inhibitors could explain the small decreases in the MICs of ß-lactam-clavulanic acid compared to those of the ß-lactams alone.
We report here the emergence in a single patient of two new TEM-type ß-lactamases belonging to the CMT subgroup of ESBLs. The two corresponding genes harbored a novel promoter region characterized by a 9-bp deletion which appeared to modify the classical Pa/Pb overlapping promoter. This work supports the currently observed evolution of the TEM-type ß-lactamases toward enzymes combining both hydrolysis of oxyimino cephalosporins and resistance to ß-lactamase inhibitors.
This work was supported in part by a grant from Ministère de l'Education Nationale, de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, Paris, France, and by a grant from the Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Clermont-Ferrand, France, and the Ministère de la Santé, de la Famille et des Personnes Handicapées, France (Projet Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique).
Published ahead of print on 12 January 2007. ![]()
This work is dedicated to the memory of Catherine Chanal. ![]()
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