VanD-Type Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis

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American Society for Microbiology

RESUMO

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. VanXD 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 VanYD activity in the membrane fractions was inhibited by penicillin G. The mutations E13G in the region of d-alanine:d-alanine ligase (which is implicated in d-Ala1 binding in A902) and S319N 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 vanSD of BM4539 and BM4540 and a 1-bp deletion in vanSD 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 VanSD, had a G140E mutation in VanRD 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 vanSD or vanRD gene that lead to constitutive resistance to vancomycin.

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