Interaction with a phage gene underlie costs of a β-lactamase

Abstract

ABSTRACT The fitness cost of an antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) can differ across host strains, creating refuges that allow the maintenance of an ARG in the absence of direct selection for its resistance phenotype. Despite the importance of such ARG-host interactions for predicting ARG dynamics, the basis of ARG fitness costs and their variability between hosts are not well understood. We determined the genetic basis of a host-dependent cost of a β-lactamase, bla TEM-116* , that conferred a significant cost in one Escherichia coli strain but was close to neutral in 11 other Escherichia spp. strains. Selection of a bla TEM-116 * -encoding plasmid in the strain in which it initially had a high cost resulted in rapid and parallel compensation for that cost through mutations in a P1-like phage gene, relA P1 . When the wild-type relA P1 gene was added to a strain in which it was not present and in which bla TEM-116 * was neutral, it caused the ARG to become costly. Thus, relA P1 is both necessary and sufficient to explain bla TEM-116 * costs in at least some host backgrounds. To our knowledge, these findings represent the first demonstrated case of the cost of an ARG being influenced by a genetic interaction with a phage gene. The interaction between a phage gene and a plasmid-borne ARG highlights the complexity of selective forces determining the maintenance and spread of ARGs and, by extension, encoding phage and plasmids in natural bacterial communities. IMPORTANCE Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) play a major role in the increasing problem of antibiotic resistance in clinically relevant bacteria. Selection of these genes occurs in the presence of antibiotics, but their eventual success also depends on the sometimes substantial costs they impose on host bacteria in antibiotic-free environments. We evolved an ARG that confers resistance to penicillin-type antibiotics in one host in which it did confer a cost and in one host in which it did not. We found that costs were rapidly and consistently reduced through parallel genetic changes in a gene encoded by a phage that was infecting the costly host. The unmutated version of this gene was sufficient to cause the ARG to confer a cost in a host in which it was originally neutral, demonstrating an antagonism between the two genetic elements and underlining the range and complexity of pressures determining ARG dynamics in natural populations.