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Native C alifornia soils are selective reservoirs for multidrug‐resistant bacteria
Author(s) -
Hollowell Amanda C.,
Gano Kelsey A.,
Lopez Gabriel,
Shahin Kareem,
Regus John U.,
Gleason Nathaniel,
Graeter Stefanie,
Pahua Victor,
Sachs Joel L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
environmental microbiology reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.229
H-Index - 69
ISSN - 1758-2229
DOI - 10.1111/1758-2229.12269
Subject(s) - biology , antibiotic resistance , resistance (ecology) , multiple drug resistance , host (biology) , abundance (ecology) , lineage (genetic) , bacteria , strain (injury) , phylogenetic tree , soil microbiology , antibiotics , ecology , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , gene , anatomy
Summary Soil bacteria can exhibit extensive antibiotic resistomes and act as reservoirs of important antibiotic resistance traits. However, the geographic sources and evolutionary drivers of resistance traits are poorly understood in these natural settings. We investigated the prevalence, spatial structure and evolutionary drivers of multidrug resistance in natural populations of B radyrhizobium , a cosmopolitan bacterial lineage that thrives in soil and aquatic systems as well as in plant and human hosts. We genotyped > 400 isolates from plant roots and soils across C alifornia and assayed 98 of them for resistance traits against 17 clinically relevant antibiotics. We investigated the geographic and phylogenetic structure of resistance traits, and analysed correlations of resistance with strain abundance, host infection capacity and in vitro fitness. We found: (i) multidrug resistance at all sites, (ii) subsets of resistance traits that are spatially structured and (iii) significant associations between resistance traits and increased strain abundance or host infection capacity. Our results highlight multiple selective factors that can result in the spread of resistance traits in native Bradyrhizobium populations.