Introduction: Enterococci represent the third most common cause of infective endocarditis, after streptococcus and Staphylococcus aureus, and are responsible for 5–20% of all cases of endocarditis. We present a rare case of native valve Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) endocarditis of mitral valve in a breast cancer patient. Case Report: A 56­year­old breast cancer patient presented with com...

Bacterial resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics is almost exclusively accomplished through either phosphorylation, adenylylation, or acetylation of the antibacterial agent. The aminoglycoside kinase, APH(3')-IIIa, catalyzes the phosphorylation of a broad spectrum of aminoglycoside antibiotics. The crystal structure of this enzyme complexed with ADP was determined at 2.2 A. resolution. The th...

Enterococcus faecalis LC40 is an ampicillin-susceptible clinical isolate with high-level gentamicin resistance due to the aac(6')-Ie-aph(2")-Ia aminoglycoside resistance gene. The combination of ampicillin plus arbekacin reduced mean bacterial vegetation counts significantly more than ampicillin alone or ampicillin plus gentamicin in a rabbit model of aortic-valve endocarditis caused by E. faec...

Antibiotic resistance is an increasing challenge to modern healthcare. Aminoglycoside antibiotics cause translation corruption and protein misfolding and aggregation in Escherichia coli. We previously showed that chaperonin GroEL/GroES depletion and over-expression sensitize and promote short-term tolerance, respectively, to this drug class. Here, we show that chaperonin GroEL/GroES over-expres...

Using functional metagenomics to study the resistomes of bacterial communities isolated from different layers of the Canadian high Arctic permafrost, we show that microbial communities harbored diverse resistance mechanisms at least 5,000 years ago. Among bacteria sampled from the ancient layers of a permafrost core, we isolated eight genes conferring clinical levels of resistance against amino...

Aminoglycosides are one of the clinically relevant antibiotics. They kill bacteria by binding to bacterial 30S subunit of ribosome. Resistance to aminoglycosides occurs by three different mechanisms: 1. Production of an enzyme that modifies aminoglycosides, 2. Impaired entry of aminoglycoside into the cell by altering the OMP permeability, decreasing inner membrane transport, or active efflux, ...