Transposons: the agents of antibiotic resistance in bacteria

Abstract

Transposons are a group of mobile genetic elements that are defined as a DNA sequence. Transposons can jump into different places of the genome; for this reason, they are called jumping genes. However, some transposons are always kept at the insertion site in the genome. Most transposons are inactivated and as a result, cannot move. Transposons are divided into two main groups: retrotransposons (class І) and DNA transposons (class ІІ). Retrotransposons are often found in eukaryotes. DNA transposons can be found in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The bacterial transposons belong to the DNA transposons and the Tn family, which are usually the carrier of additional genes for antibiotic resistance. Transposons can transfer from a plasmid to other plasmids or from a DNA chromosome to plasmid and vice versa that cause the transmission of antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria. The treatment of bacterial infectious diseases is difficult because of existing antibiotic resistance that part of this antibiotic resistance is caused by transposons. Bacterial infectious diseases are responsible for the increasing rise in world mortality rate. In this review, transposons and their roles have been studied in bacterial antibiotic resistance, in detail.

The effect of antibiotics on the gut microbiome: a metagenomics analysis of microbial shift and gut antibiotic resistance in antibiotic treated mice

“…Transposases are proteins encoded by transposons that allows the transposons to move from plasmid to chromosome or vice versa and could carry antibiotic resistant gene payload [52,53]. Interestingly, after treatment with cipro a significant jump in the relative abundance of transposases was observed and could signify an increased potential for horizontal gene transfer in the gut community of cipro treated mice.…”

“…A heatmap was created for each antibiotic using R with ggplot2 package to demonstrate clustering of samples based on the similarity of compositional species profiles (log-transformed relative abundance across all identified species). Hierarchical clustering was performed and a dendrogram was created using unweighted pair group mean with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) algorithm (53,54,55). The order of the listed bacterial species in each heatmap of the Fig.…”

Regulatory Mechanisms of the LuxS/AI-2 System and Bacterial Resistance

“…Xue et al (42) showed that exogenous AI-2 increased the antibiotic resistance of clinical E. coli strains isolated from cow's papillitis by upregulating the expression of TEM-type enzyme in an LsrR-dependent manner. Transposons are a group of mobile genetic elements that are defined as a DNA sequence (43). Because of its ability to move between bacterial chromosomes, plasmids, and phages, resistance on the transposon is more easily transmitted and disseminated horizontally (44,45).…”

Assessment of multidrug resistance in bacterial isolates from urinary tract-infected patients

“…If not diagnosed in time and treated properly, UTIs increase the economic burden and are associated with severe and serious acute and chronic consequences that include recurrence, pyelonephritis with sepsis, renal damage, preterm birth, and complications (Flores-Mireles et al, 2015). Treatment of bacterial infection has become difficult due to drug resistance (Babakhani & Oloomi, 2018). Moreover, catheter-associated UTIs have higher risk of mortality (Li et al, 2019).…”