Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin (encoded by the cpe gene) contributes to several important human, and possibly veterinary, enteric diseases. The current study investigated whether cpe locus organization in type C or D isolates resembles one of the three (one chromosomal and two plasmid-borne) cpe loci commonly found amongst type A isolates. Multiplex PCR assays capable of detecting sequence...

Horizontal dissemination of the genes responsible for resistance to toxic pollutants may play a key role in the adaptation of bacterial populations to environmental contaminants. However, the frequency and extent of gene dissemination in natural environments is not known. A natural horizontal spread of two distinct mercury resistance (mer) operon variants, which occurred amongst diverse Bacillu...

Vancomycin resistance of Staphylococcus aureus NY-VRSA and VRSA-5 is due to acquisition of a vanA operon located in a Tn1546-like element. The vanA gene cluster of NY-VRSA contained one copy of insertion sequences IS1251 and IS1216V relative to that of VRSA-5. As evidenced by the nature of the late peptidoglycan precursors and by quantification of d,d-peptidase activities, the vancomycin resist...

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium represents a growing threat in hospital-acquired infections. Two outbreaks of this pathogen from neighboring Warsaw hospitals have been analyzed in this study. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of SmaI-digested DNA, multilocus VNTR analysis (MLVA), and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) revealed a clonal variability of isolates which belonged to th...

3 School of Biological Horizontal dissemination of the genes responsible for resistance to toxic pollutants may play a key role in the adaptation of bacterial populations to environmental contaminants. However, the frequency and extent of gene dissemination in natural environments is not known. A natural horizontal spread of two distinct mercury resistance (mer) operon variants, which occurred ...

Hospital-acquired infections caused by vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are increasing. The resistance of VRE to multiple antibiotics makes them clinically challenging. There are at least six phenotypes of VRE, including VanA, VanB, VanC, VanD, VanE, and VanG (2, 8). These phenotypes correspond with the genotypes vanA, vanB, vanC, vanD, vanE, and vanG. VanA and VanB phenotypes are common ...