In this review an overview is given on antibiotic resistance (AR) mechanisms with special attentions to the AR genes described so far preceded by a short introduction on the discovery and mode of action of the different classes of antibiotics. As this review is only dealing with acquired resistance, attention is also paid to mobile genetic elements such as plasmids, transposons, and integrons, ...

The fitness of sensitive and resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in different aquatic environments depends on genetic capacities and transcriptional regulation. Therefore, an antibiotic-sensitive isolate PA30 and a multi-resistant isolate PA49 originating from waste waters were compared via whole genome and transcriptome Illumina sequencing after exposure to municipal waste water and tap water. A ...

Bacteria face a trade-off between genetic fidelity, which reduces deleterious mistakes in the genome, and genetic innovation, which allows organisms to adapt. Evidence suggests that many bacteria balance this trade-off by modulating their mutation rates, but few mechanisms have been described for such modulation. Following experimental evolution and whole-genome resequencing of the marine bacte...

The research described in the first part of this thesis is focussed on the role and characteristics of mobile genetic elements. These DNA elements give bacteria the ability to pass on traits, such as antibiotic resistance mechanisms and virulence factors. Since bacteria are continuously exchanging DNA, a rapid emergence of multidrug resistant microorganisms occurs. Due to a lack of fallback age...

Biodiversity is mostly discussed at the level of species, but genetic variation within species may be as important as variation between species. It enables organisms to adapt to environmental changes. The requirement for genetic variation differs however widely between species and groups of species. Animal species at the top of the food web, such as large carnivorous mammals, tend to have a rem...

Bacterial pathogens exhibit significant variation in their genomic content of virulence factors. This reflects the abundance of strategies pathogens evolved to infect host organisms by suppressing host immunity. Molecular arms-races have been a strong driving force for the evolution of pathogenicity, with pathogens often encoding overlapping or redundant functions, such as type III protein secr...

Propionibacterium acnes is a Gram-positive bacterium that is intimately associated with humans. The nature and consequences of this symbiosis are poorly understood; it might comprise both mutualistic and parasitic properties. Recent advances in distinguishing phylotypes of P. acnes have revealed that certain type I lineages are predominantly associated with acne vulgaris. Genome analyses reveal...

Organic solvent-tolerant bacteria are outstanding and versatile hosts for the bio-based production of a broad range of generally toxic aromatic compounds. The energetically costly solvent tolerance mechanisms are subject to multiple levels of regulation, involving among other mobile genetic elements. The genome of the solvent-tolerant Pseudomonas putida S12 contains many such mobile elements th...

a sensor network is made up of a large number of sensors with limited energy. sensors collect environmental data then send them to the sink. energy efficiency and thereby increasing the lifetime of sensor networks is important. direct transfer of the data from each node to the central station will increase energy consumption. previous research has shown that the organization of nodes in cluster...

Vibrio alginolyticus has high genetic diversity, but little is known about the means by which it has been acquired. In this study, the distributions of mobile genetic elements (MGEs), including integrating conjugative elements (ICEs), superintegron-like cassettes (SICs), insertion sequences (ISs), and two types of transposase genes (valT1 and valT2), in 192 strains of V. alginolyticus were inve...