VanD-Type Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Enterococcus faecium clinical isolates A902 and BM4538, which were resistant to relatively high levels of vancomycin (128 and 64 μg/ml, respectively) and to low levels of teicoplanin (4 μg/ml), and Enterococcus faecalis clinical isolates BM4539 and BM4540, which were resistant to moderate levels of vancomycin (16 μg/ml) and susceptible to teicoplanin (0.25 μg/ml), were studied. They were constitutively resistant by synthesis of peptidoglycan precursors ending with d -alanyl- d -lactate and harbored a chromosomal vanD gene cluster which was not transferable by conjugation to other enterococci. VanX D activity, which is not required in the absence of d -Ala- d -Ala, was low in the four strains, although none of the conserved residues was mutated; and the constitutive VanY D activity in the membrane fractions was inhibited by penicillin G. The mutations E 13 G in the region of d -alanine: d -alanine ligase (which is implicated in d -Ala1 binding in A902) and S 319 N of the serine involved in ATP binding in BM4538 and a 7-bp insertion at different locations in BM4539 and BM4540 (which led to putative truncated proteins) led to the production of an impaired enzyme and accounted for the lack of d -Ala- d -Ala-containing peptidoglycan precursors. The same 7-bp insertion in vanS D of BM4539 and BM4540 and a 1-bp deletion in vanS D of A902, which in each case led to a putative truncated and presumably nonfunctional protein, could account for the constitutive resistance. Strain BM4538, with a functional VanS D , had a G 140 E mutation in VanR D that could be responsible for constitutive glycopeptide resistance. This would represent the first example of constitutive van gene expression due to a mutation in the structural gene for a VanR transcriptional activator. Study of these four additional strains that could be distinguished on the basis of their various assortments of mutations confirmed that all VanD-type strains isolated so far have mutations in the ddl housekeeping gene and in the acquired vanS D or vanR D gene that lead to constitutive resistance to vancomycin.