Open AccessCharacterisation of VanA and VanB elements from glycopeptide-resistant Enterococcus faecium from Greece
Author(s) -
Elli Demertzi,
M-F.I. Palepou,
Mary E. Kaufmann,
Athina Avlamis,
Neil Woodford
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of medical microbiology/journal of medical microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.91
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1473-5644
pISSN - 0022-2615
DOI - 10.1099/0022-1317-50-8-682
Subject(s) - enterococcus faecium , biology , genetics , insertion sequence , gene , glycopeptide , transposable element , transposition (logic) , point mutation , microbiology and biotechnology , phenotype , gene cluster , mutation , bacteria , antibiotics , mutant , linguistics , philosophy
Ten glycopeptide-resistant Enterococcus faecium isolates from separate patients in Laikon General Hospital, Athens were studied. Eight isolates had the VanA phenotype and represented variants of three strains based on SmaI macrorestriction banding patterns. Their VanA elements were compared with the prototype element, Tn1546, by an overlapping PCR method. Three related isolates contained resistance elements indistinguishable from Tn1546 (designated Greek type I). The other five isolates all contained identical elements that differed from Tn1546 by the presence of IS1251 between vanS and vanH, by a point mutation (G --> T) at nucleotide position 8234 within vanX and by a partial loss of transposition gene orf1 (designated Greek type II). Two distinct strains of E. faecium with the VanB phenotype were obtained. HhaI digestion of an amplified fragment of the vanB gene indicated that both strains contained the vanB2 allele, and further PCR assays confirmed that the vanB2 gene cluster was located within a Tn5382-like element.