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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2003, p. 1784-1789, Vol. 47, No. 6
0066-4804/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AAC.47.6.1784-1789.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Variable Sensitivity to Bacterial Methionyl-tRNA Synthetase Inhibitors Reveals Subpopulations of Streptococcus pneumoniae with Two Distinct Methionyl-tRNA Synthetase Genes

Daniel R. Gentry,1* Karen A. Ingraham,1 Michael J. Stanhope,2 Stephen Rittenhouse,1 Richard L. Jarvest,3 Peter J. O'Hanlon,3 James R. Brown,2 and David J. Holmes1

Department of Microbiology, Microbial, Musculoskeletal, and Proliferative Diseases Center of Excellence for Drug Discovery,1 Bioinformatics, GlaxoSmithKline, Collegeville, Pennsylvania 19426,2 Medicinal Chemistry, Microbial, Musculoskeletal, and Proliferative Diseases Center of Excellence for Drug Discovery, GlaxoSmithKline, New Frontiers Science Park, Essex CM19 5AW, United Kingdom3

Received 26 September 2002/ Returned for modification 8 December 2002/ Accepted 10 March 2003

As reported previously (J. R. Jarvest et al., J. Med. Chem. 45:1952-1962, 2002), potent inhibitors (at nanomolar concentrations) of Staphylococcus aureus methionyl-tRNA synthetase (MetS; encoded by metS1) have been derived from a high-throughput screening assay hit. Optimized compounds showed excellent activities against staphylococcal and enterococcal pathogens. We report on the bimodal susceptibilities of S. pneumoniae strains, a significant fraction of which was found to be resistant (MIC, >=8 mg/liter) to these inhibitors. Using molecular genetic techniques, we have found that the mechanism of resistance is the presence of a second, distantly related MetS enzyme, MetS2, encoded by metS2. We present evidence that the metS2 gene is necessary and sufficient for resistance to MetS inhibitors. PCR analysis for the presence of metS2 among a large sample (n = 315) of S. pneumoniae isolates revealed that it is widespread geographically and chronologically, occurring at a frequency of about 46%. All isolates tested also contained the metS1 gene. Searches of public sequence databases revealed that S. pneumoniae MetS2 was most similar to MetS in Bacillus anthracis, followed by MetS in various non-gram-positive bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic species, with streptococcal MetS being considerably less similar. We propose that the presence of metS2 in specific strains of S. pneumoniae is the result of horizontal gene transfer which has been driven by selection for resistance to some unknown class of naturally occurring antibiotics with similarities to recently reported synthetic MetS inhibitors.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology, MMPD CEDD, GlaxoSmithKline, 1250 S. Collegeville Rd., Collegeville, PA 19426. Phone: (610) 970-7504. Fax: (610) 970-7901. E-mail: dan.r.gentry{at}gsk.com.

Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2003, p. 1784-1789, Vol. 47, No. 6
0066-4804/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AAC.47.6.1784-1789.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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