Affiliation:
1. Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
2. Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65212
Abstract
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
, an opportunistic pathogen that often initiates infections from a reservoir in the intestinal tract, may donate or acquire antibiotic resistance in an anaerobic environment. Only by including nitrate and nitrite in media could antibiotic-resistant and -sensitive strains of
P. aeruginosa
be cultured in a glove box isolator. These anaerobically grown cells remained sensitive to lytic phage isolated from sewage. After incubation with a phage lysate derived from
P. aeruginosa
1822, anaerobic transfer of antibiotic resistance to recipients
P. aeruginosa
PS8EtBr and PS8EtBrR occurred at frequencies of 6.2 × 10
−9
and 5.0 × 10
−8
cells per plaque-forming unit, respectively. In experiments performed outside the isolator, transfer frequencies to PS8EtBr and PS8EtBrR were higher, 1.3 × 10
−7
and 6.5 × 10
−8
cells per plaque-forming unit, respectively. When
P. aeruginosa
1822 was incubated aerobically with
Escherichia coli
B in medium containing nitrate and nitrite, the maximum concentration of carbenicillin-resistant
E. coli
B reached 25% of the total
E. coli
B population. This percentage declined to 0.01% of the total
E. coli
B population when anaerobically grown
P. aeruginosa
1822 and
E. coli
B were combined and incubated in the glove box isolator. The highest concentration of the recipient population converted to antibiotic resistance occurred after 24 h of aerobic incubation, when an initially high donor/recipient ratio (>15) of cells was mixed. These data indicate that transfer of antibiotic resistance either by transduction between
Pseudomonas
spp. or by conjugation between
Pseudomonas
sp. and
E. coli
occurs under strict anaerobic conditions, although at lower frequencies than under aerobic conditions.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
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