Phylogeographical Analyses and Antibiotic Resistance Genes of Acinetobacter johnsonii Highlight Its Clinical Relevance

Abstract

Acinetobacter johnsonii has been severely understudied and its population structure and the presence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are very much uncertain. Our phylogeographical analysis shows that intercontinental transmission has occurred frequently and that different lineages are circulating within single countries; notably, clinical and nonclinical strains are not well differentiated from one another. Importantly, in this species recombination is a significant source of single nucleotide polymorphisms. Furthermore, our results show this species could be an important reservoir of ARGs since it has a significant amount of ARGs, and many of them show signals of horizontal gene transfer. Thus, this study clearly points out the clinical importance of A. johnsonii and the urgent need to better appreciate its genomic diversity.

Accessory Genomic Epidemiology of Cocirculating Acinetobacter baumannii Clones

“…Over the last decades, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has become the ultimate approach to study the dissemination of many bacterial pathogens ( 4 – 8 ). WGS has been extremely useful in the case of A. baumannii , where the very dynamic nature of its genome renders the two multilocus sequence typing (MLST) schemes faulty ( 9 , 10 ).…”

Emerging species in pediatrics: a case of Acinetobacter johnsonii meningitis

“…The treatment of neuroinfection caused by the genus Acinetobacter represents a challenge for the clinician, given the increasing antimicrobial resistance reported and the fact that most antibiotics have a low permeability at the blood-brain barrier, thus reducing the possibilities of treatment 15 . The state of antibiotic multidrug resistance of A. baumannii due to the irrational use of antibiotics in patients carrying resistance genes has been widely described 16 . A marked sensitivity pattern has been evidenced in other genospecies such as A. johnsonii, which is consistent with the antibiogram of the present case, which allowed a de-escalation of the initial empirical management.…”

The promiscuous and highly mobile resistome of Acinetobacter baumannii

“…Studies analysing the pangenome of this species have unveiled important aspects of its genetic variation [9] and its defence mechanisms [10,11]. Additionally, population genomics and genomic surveillance studies have been very useful to study the geographical and temporal spreading of important lineages in this and other species [12][13][14][15][16][17]. However, most of these studies have used the core genome as the framework to understand the dynamics of the ARGs.…”