Intra- and inter-species mobilisation of non-conjugative plasmids in staphylococci. |
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Authors: | E E Udo H Love W B Grubb |
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Institution: | School of Biomedical Sciences, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. |
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Abstract: | The ability of Staphylococcus aureus conjugative plasmids to mobilise non-conjugative resistance plasmids from clinical isolates of S. aureus and S. epidermidis was studied. Plasmids which could not be transferred by transduction or mixed-culture transfer were transferred from phage-typable and non-typable S. aureus and from S. epidermidis. Plasmids encoding single resistance determinants were transferred by mobilisation whereas multiple-resistance plasmids were transferred as co-integrates between the conjugative and non-conjugative plasmids. This study demonstrates that mobilisation is a useful tool for the transfer and study of staphylococcal plasmids and illustrates how antibiotic resistance could be transferred between staphylococci in vivo. |
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