Pathogenic Acinetobacter species, most notably Acinetobacter baumannii, are a significant cause of healthcare-associated infections worldwide. Acinetobacter infections are of particular concern to global health due to the high rates of multidrug resistance and extensive drug resistance. Widespread genome sequencing and analysis has determined that bacterial antibiotic resistance is often acquired and disseminated through the movement of mobile genetic elements, including insertion sequences (IS), transposons, integrons, and conjugative plasmids. In Acinetobacter specifically, resistance to carbapenems and cephalosporins is highly correlated with IS, as many ISAba elements encode strong outwardly facing promoters that are required for sufficient expression of β-lactamases to confer clinical resistance. Here, we review the role of mobile genetic elements in antibiotic resistance in Acinetobacter species through the framework of the mechanism of resistance acquisition and with a focus on experimentally validated mechanisms.
Keywords: Acinetobacter; antibiotic resistance; insertion sequence; mobile genetic element; transposon.
© 2022 The Authors. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of New York Academy of Sciences.