Plasmids and bacterial resistance to biocides

Microbial Resistance and Biocides

Persistence of antibiotic resistance plasmids in bacterial biofilms

The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance is a crisis in health care today. Antibiotic resistance is often horizontally transferred to susceptible bacteria by means of multidrug resistance plasmids that may or may not persist in the absence of antibiotics. Because bacterial pathogens often grow as biofilms, there is a need to better understand the evolution of plasmid persistence in the...

Possible link between bacterial resistance and use of antibiotics and biocides.

Low-level plasmid-mediated resistance to cationic biocides such as chlorhexidine (CHX), quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), amidines, and acridines has been observed in antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis (1, 4, 5), and it has been postulated that strains in which qac genes are present might have enhanced survival in the clinical environment. E...

Various pAQU plasmids possibly contribute to disseminate tetracycline resistance gene tet(M) among marine bacterial community

Emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the aquaculture environment is a significant problem for disease control of cultured fish as well as in human public health. Conjugative mobile genetic elements (MGEs) are involved in dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) among marine bacteria. In the present study, we first designed a PCR targeting traI gene encoding essential relaxas...

Bacterial plasmids: replication of extrachromosomal genetic elements encoding resistance to antimicrobial compounds.

Plasmids are self-replicating extrachromosomal DNA molecules found in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria as well as in some yeast and other fungi. Although most of them are covalently closed circular double-stranded DNA molecules, recently linear plasmids have been isolated from different bacteria. In general, plasmids are not essential for the survival of bacteria, but they may neverthel...