First report of multiresistance gene cfr in Enterococcus species casseliflavus and gallinarum of swine origin

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the presence and genetic environment of the multiresistance gene cfr in Enterococcus species of swine origin. Twenty-five cfr-carrying Enterococcus isolates were collected from swine in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shandong, China. The isolates consist of 24 Enterococcus casseliflavus and one Enterococcus gallinarum isolate, and exhibited six SmaI PFGE patterns. The cfr gene was located on plasmids in all isolates except E. casseliflavus En83, in which cfr was located on the chromosomal DNA. The cfr gene environments in most of these isolates contain DNA sequences similar to pEF-01, which was first found in Enterococcus. However, inverse PCR analysis suggested that the cfr-carrying circular forms might be different from pEF-01. The circular forms in Eg51 and its transconjugant, and En23, En10, and En94 are similar to the circular form in pEF-01, except for the truncated IS1216, which is replaced by a transposase of the IS256 family in En24. The cfr circular form could not be detected in either En77 or En83, and the same cfr-carrying segments of ∼ 10 kb had only 3500bp of sequence similar to pEF-01. This is the first report of cfr gene in E. casseliflavus and E. gallinarum. The potential dissemination of the multidrug resistance gene amongst different bacterial species, especially in enterococci of human and animal origins, is concerning and should be closely monitored.

Keywords: Food safety; Intro-genus transfer; Linezolid resistance.