Penicillinase-encoding gene blaTEM-1 may be plasmid borne or chromosomally located in Kingella kingae species.

Kingella kingae is the prime pathogen of osteoarticular infections in young children in numerous countries (1–4). Although K. kingae is usually susceptible to antibiotics that are administered to children with skeletal system infections, -lactamase production has been sporadically detected in Iceland (5), the United States (6), Israel (7), and, more recently, in France (8). Using genotyping methods such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST), -lactamase production appeared as clonally distributed. Indeed, four different clones have been described in Israel (PFGE clone A/sequence type complex 34 [STc-34], clone F/STc-3, clone /ST-40, and clone T/ST-not typeable), one common clone was isolated in Iceland and the United States (clone K/ST-6), and the French isolate belonged to STc-14 (8, 9). Although the U.S. and Icelandic -lactamase producers were associated with a blaTEM-1 gene carried by a conjugative plasmid, the French isolate possesses a chromosomally located blaTEM-1 gene (8, 10). In this report, we investigated the blaTEM-1 gene location in randomly chosen strains belonging to the four Israeli -lactamase-producing clones, using PFGE of I-CeuI-digested DNA, followed by hybridization on a Southern blot with blaTEM-1 and 16S/ 23S rRNA gene probes, as previously described (8). The Icelandic 0211 12480 and U.S. C2005004457 strains were used as plas-