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© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd
Analysis of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa oprD genefrom clinical and environmental isolates
Introduction
Fluorescent pseudomonads are known for their strikingability to adapt to various ecological niches (Rainey andTravisano, 1998; Spiers et al., 2000). Pseudomonasaeruginosa, a ubiquitous pseudomonad, is also known asa human pathogen causing a variety of severe infectionsof nosocomial nature (Emori and Gaynes, 1993; Vincentet al., 1995). A classical example of the interplay of P.aeruginosa with its environment is antibiotic resistance.The introduction of antibiotic agents has led to the emer-gence of P. aeruginosa as one of the most problematicopportunistic pathogens in humans. Resistance againstthe limited number of antimicrobial agents displaying reliable antipseudomonal activity (e.g. carbapenems andfluoroquinolones) has been encountered with increasingfrequency (Quin et al., 1986; Masuda and Ohya, 1992).Carbapenems are not prone to inactivation by extended-spectrum b-lactamases and cross the outer membrane ofP. aeruginosa through a specialized pore protein, OprD,which allows selective permeation of basic amino acidsas well as small peptides containing these amino acidsand their structural analogues (Trias and Nikaido, 1990;Huang and Hancock, 1993). As such, carbapenems havea major role as initial empirical therapy as well as definitive therapy in severe P. aeruginosa infections(Bradley et al., 1999). However, prolonged treatment of P. aeruginosa-infected patients with imipenem, a carbapenem antibiotic, has often allowed for the emer-gence of imipenem-resistant mutants. These resistantstrains have either lost OprD (Quin et al., 1986; Lynchet al., 1987) or have strongly reduced OprD levels due to an nfxC-type of quinolone-resistant mutation, whichrepresses oprD and activates the mexEF–oprN multidrugefflux operon (Fukuda et al., 1995; Köhler et al., 1997). Itis unlikely that decreased penetration through the outermembrane, through mutational loss of OprD, alone canresult in high carbapenem resistance. The presence of aninducible or derepressed chromosomal b-lactamase,capable of hydrolysis at very low substrate concentra-tions, is also necessary (Satake et al., 1991; Livermore,1992). Recently Köhler et al. (1999) demonstrated thatmeropenem, but not imipenem, was a substrate of theconstitutively expressed MexAB–OprM efflux pump.
Nine years ago, Yoneyama and Nakae (1993) pub-lished the results of a study in which they analysed theelimination of OprD in 23 independent imipenem-resistant
Environmental Microbiology (2002) 4(12), 872–882
Jean-Paul Pirnay,1,2 Daniel De Vos,1,3 DimitrisMossialos,1† Alain Vanderkelen,2 Pierre Cornelis1
and Martin Zizi2,4*1Laboratory of Microbial Interactions, Department ofImmunology, Parasitology, and Ultrastructure, FlandersInteruniversity Institute of Biotechnology, Brussels FreeUniversity, B-1640 Sint-Genesius-Rode, Brussels,Belgium.2Science Department, Belgian Military Medical Service,Queen Astrid Military Hospital, B-1120 Neder-Over-Heembeek, Belgium.3Department of Infectious Diseases, Innogenetics NV,B-9052 Ghent, Belgium.4Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine andPharmacy, Brussels Free University, B-1090 Brussels,Belgium.
Summary
Genomes are constantly evolving. Our report high-lights the wide mutational diversity of clinical as wellas environmental isolates, compared with the labora-tory strain(s), through the systematic genetic analy-sis of a chromosomal porin gene (oprD) in relation toa specific antibiotic resistance. Mutational inactiva-tion of the oprD gene is associated with carbapenemresistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Thesequence of the oprD gene of 55 Pseudomonasaeruginosa natural isolates obtained from across theworld – from sources as diverse as patients and rhizospheres – was analysed. A microscale mosaicstructure for this gene – resulting from multiple intra-and possibly interspecies recombinational events – isreported. An array of independent and seemingly fast-occurring defective oprD mutations were found,none of which had been described before. A burnwound isolate demonstrated unusually high overallsequence variability typical of mutator strains. Wealso present evidence for the existence of OprDhomologues in other fluorescent pseudomonads.
Received 20 November, 2001; accepted 25 January, 2002. *For cor-respondence. E-mail martin.zizi@vub.ac.be; Tel. (32) 2 477 4434;Fax (32) 2 477 4568. †Present address: Department of Biology, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Sir AlexanderFleming Building, Imperial College Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK.Parts of this paper were presented at the Pseudomonas 2001 conference, Brussels, Belgium, 17–21 September.
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© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
mutants from TNP038, a laboratory strain harbouring aplasmid carrying the oprD gene and having a mutation inchromosomal oprD. The cloned oprD gene was derivedfrom strain PAO1 (Holloway, 1955; Stover et al., 2000),the prototype strain for sequencing, because it is the mostwidely used P. aeruginosa laboratory strain. They foundthat all 23 laboratory mutants could be divided into twogroups, both groups carrying a specific deletion in theoprD gene. One group had an 11 bp deletion in the codingregion, generating a frameshift resulting in a prematuretermination; the other group had a 1204 bp deletion covering the initiation codon and the promoter region.Although only plasmid-borne PAO1 oprD was analysed, itwas suggested that elimination of OprD from mostimipenem-resistant P. aeruginosa isolates is due to efficient selection of oprD deletion mutants. Since then,nobody verified that chromosomal mutations in imipenem-resistant clinical isolates are caused by the same mechanism. We sequenced the oprD gene from 37imipenem-sensitive and 18 imipenem-resistant P. aerug-inosa isolates, collected over a period of 15 years fromvarious, spatially separated, clinical and environmentalhabitats (Table 1), in order to assess the sequence diver-sity and the extent of naturally occurring chromosomalmutations. We also present evidence for the existence ofoprD-like genes in other fluorescent pseudomonads.
Results and discussion
Mosaic structure of the oprD gene
We found that all oprD sequences from P. aeruginosa iso-lates fell into three distinct groups (arbitrarily designatedA, B and C), with identities ranging from 91% to 93% forDNA and from 88% to 93% for amino acids. Visual inspec-tion of an alignment of oprD sequences showed clear evidence of a history of intraspecies recombinationalexchanges of DNA blocks of 100–300 bp, leading to a
mosaic gene structure and causing a further divergenceinto subgroups (Fig. 1). Such small-scale mosaics werealso suggested at the protein level for the VDAC chan-nels (or mitochondrial porins) (Song and Colombini,1996). The exchange of DNA blocks ranging in size from1 kb to 214 kb by mechanisms of horizontal transfer hasbeen described in P. aeruginosa (Römling et al., 1997),and more recently Kiewitz and Tümmler (2000) observedhypervariable regions in the flagellin and pillin genes of P.aeruginosa, indicating intragenic recombination events.All these findings add to the growing evidence that bac-teria have obtained a significant proportion of their geneticdiversity through the acquisition of sequences from rela-tively closely related bacteria (Smith et al., 1991; Ochmanet al., 2000), and that the uptake and chromosomal incorporation of DNA is not confined to some well-known naturally transformable genera such as Haemophilus(Kroll et al., 1994) and Neisseria (Halter et al., 1989).Recently, Wilderman et al. (2001) even suggested that P. aeruginosa had horizontally acquired a eukaryotic-like phospholipase D gene. The large variety of OprDhomologues in P. aeruginosa (http://cmdr.ubc.ca/bobh/OprDfamily.html) and in other bacteria presents opportu-nities for intrachromosomal exchange and horizontalgene transfer. To date, putative substrates have beenidentified for 8 of the 19 specific porins of the P. aerugi-nosa OprD family (Tamber et al., 2001), but so far onlyOprD appears to play a role in antibiotic uptake. A com-parison of P. aeruginosa OprD against the unfinishedgenomic sequences of P. fluorescens (strain Pf0-1), P. syringae (pv. Tomato) and P. putida (strain KT2440) in the NCBI database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/Entrez/genom_table_cgi) using TBLASTN softwarerevealed the existence of such ‘OprD’ porin families in P.fluorescens (10 genes), P. syringae (11 genes) and P.putida (19 genes). By analogy with the P. aeruginosaOprD family, all members showed particularly highsequence similarity in regions that may constitute trans-
Isolation site
Geographical origin Wound Sputum Environment Others
Australia 1Belgium 4 2 2Bulgaria 2Czech Republic 1England 2Germany 3 5 5Hungary 1 1Pakistan 2Philippines 1Portugal 4The Netherlands 2 2Tunisia 1 2Turkey 3USA 5 4
Table 1. Sources of the 55 P. aeruginosaisolates used in this study.
© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
874 J.-P. Pirnay et al.
membrane domains and least similarity in the sequencescoding for the external loops and signal peptides. In each ‘OprD’ family we observed one member with ahigher similarity (51–65% amino acid homology) to P.aeruginosa OprD than the other members of the family(30–40%). An alignment of the amino acid sequences ofthese ‘true’ OprD homologues with representatives of thethree P. aeruginosa OprD groups we observed in thisstudy (A, B and C) revealed similarity, in the highly vari-able region of external loop 7, between the OprD homo-logues of P. syringae, P. fluorescens and representativesof the OprD groups A and B, but not C, of P. aeruginosa(Fig. 2). Strain PAO1, with which all substrate selectivityexperiments were carried out (Huang and Hancock,1993), belongs to subgroup ‘C1’ (Fig. 1). We were notable to determine whether this anomaly is the result of ahighly localized interspecies recombinational exchange orvertical evolution. As this analysis was based on contigsequences (P. syringae, August 2001; and P. putida,
September 2001) or a complete genomic sequence, but prior to final DNA assembly and annotation (P. fluorescens, June 2001), we are aware that the results ofour query are probably incomplete.
We found no correlation between the oprD groups andhabitats or geographic origin. The oprD sequence of aburn wound isolate obtained from London, for example,could be identical to that of a river water isolate from Pak-istan, or two strains isolated from the same patient inBrussels could be positioned very far apart. An OprDtopology model predicted eight external loops, and it wassuggested that loops 2 and 3 have a role in imipenembinding to the OprD channel, whereas loops 5, 7 and 8serve to restrict the OprD channel at its entrance, ham-pering non-specific passage of antibiotics (Huang et al.,1995; Huang and Hancock, 1996; Ochs et al., 2000). Aswe observed that amino acid variations between oprDgroups were particularly high at the external loops, includ-ing the loops putatively involved in antibiotic passage
Fig. 1. Graphical representation of the mosaic structure of the oprD gene in 55 unbiased P. aeruginosa strains. Although all sequences fellinto three main groups (A, B and C), which differ by 7–9% of nucleotides, several distant sequences contained nearly identical regions of afew hundred basepairs, witnesses of local exchanges of sequences between the groups. These recombinational events caused a furtherdivergence into subgroups. The members of each subgroup differed by <0.5% of nucleotides among themselves. Laboratory strain PAO1differed by about 1.4% of nucleotides from subgroup C1, mainly because of the exchange of a 250 bp sequence with group B. Regionsrepresented by the same colour are similar in sequence. *Including 10 isolates of a predominant clone, called clone C, derived fromenvironment and disease habitats (Römling et al., 1994). n, number of isolates belonging to a subgroup.
Fig. 2. Multiple amino acid alignment (UPGMA) of presumed loop 7 of the ‘true’ OprD homologues of P. syringae (pv. Tomato), P. fluorescens(Pf0-1), P. putida (KT2440) and representatives of P. aeruginosa OprD groups (A, B and C). Highly conserved residues are boxed in grey andgaps are represented by dots. Notice the relatively high similarity in the highly variable region of external loop 7 between OprD homologues ofP. syringae, P. fluorescens and P. aeruginosa OprD groups A and B.
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© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
Fig. 3. Multiple amino acid alignment(UPGMA) of the external loops (L2, 3, 5, 7 and8), relevant for antibiotic passage, of the OprDgroups (A, B, C1 and C2), the ‘mutator’ strain,and laboratory strain PAO1. Highly conservedresidues are boxed in grey and gaps arerepresented by dots. Notice the mosaicstructure and the important sequence diversity,especially in loop 7, and the duplication ofsequence TACGGC in loop 7 of strain PAO1and subgroups C1 and C2. Numbering isbased on strain PAO1.
(Fig. 3), differences in substrate specificity between theoprD groups cannot be excluded. Although we did notobserve a direct correlation between the oprD groups andcarbapenem resistance, it is interesting that, recently, Eppet al. (2001) demonstrated that the C-terminal region, andmore specifically loop 7, of OprD modulates susceptibil-ity to meropenem. It is also true that high levels of recom-bination can be due to a ‘hitch-hiking’ effect caused bypositive selection for variation at a neighbouring gene,and Zhou et al. (1997) suggested that interspecies recom-binational exchanges could be observed even when thereappears to be no obvious selection for the recombinantphenotypes.
Mutator strain?
One burn wound isolate (BR680) demonstrated unusuallyhigh sequence variability in the oprD gene (Figs 1 and 3)as well as in other genes (oprL and oprI, data not shown).Similar aberrant sequence variability in different loci wasrecently detected in a P. aeruginosa ear infection isolate(Kiewitz and Tümmler, 2000). An augmented rate of variation, caused by spontaneous mutations, is typical ofhypermutable (mutator) strains, which allow bacterial populations to adapt to stressful environments (Leclercet al., 1996; Miller, 1996; Matic et al., 1997). An increasedrate of polymerase errors and/or defects in the proof-reading and mismatch repair mechanisms is believed tocause this state of hypermutation. In bacteria the initialerrors are probably polymerase errors, caused by spon-taneous mutations or triggered by damage to the templatestrand (Bridges, 2001). Recently, high frequencies of
hypermutable P. aeruginosa strains were detected incystic fibrosis lung infection (Oliver et al., 2000). Thesemutator strains persisted for years in most patients. Totest the hypothesis of the mutator phenotype, we esti-mated the frequency of mutation resulting into rifampicinresistance of strains BR680 and PAO1 as reported byOliver et al. (2000). According to their study, a strain wasconsidered a mutator when the mutation frequency wasat least 20-fold higher than that observed for PAO1. In ourcase, strains BR680 and PAO1 showed similar mutationfrequencies (~10-8). The combination of a mutator geno-type with a non-mutator phenotype can be explained asfollows: strain BR680 probably exhibited a mutator phe-notype, but once adapted, it reverted to the non-mutatorstate (Taddei et al., 1997). This is to be expected, as theaccumulation of deleterious mutations could decrease thefitness of the mutator population in the long term. StrainBR680 displayed a moderate imipenem resistance combined with a relatively high sensibility to meropenem,ceftazidime and aztreonam (see Table 3). An altered conformation of the OprD channel, which is likely, takinginto account the important aberrations in the amino acidsequence of BR680 OprD, could account for this unusualantibiotic pattern.
Mutational inactivation of oprD
In 12 imipenem-resistant isolates, defective chromosomaloprD mutations were observed (Table 2). Yet, all muta-tions were unique, and different from the two deletionspreviously described for laboratory strain TNP038(Yoneyama and Nakae, 1993). Different classes of muta-
© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
876 J.-P. Pirnay et al.
tions were found. The majority (7) were distinct base substitutions, causing a premature termination (5) or thereplacement of leucine by proline in the signal peptide (1)or external loop 7 (1). Two single-base deletions and onesingle-base duplication occurred at monotonic repeats(CCCC and GGGGG), causing a frameshift, resulting inthe creation of a translational stop codon in the regiondownstream of the mutation. A 44-base duplication wasobserved at a direct repeat of a 6 bp DNA motif(GCGCGG), separated by 44 intervening nucleotides(Fig. 4). These deletions and duplications could becaused by a mechanism first described by Streisinger
et al. (1966), which involves the slipped misalignment ofthe repeated sequences during DNA replication with theformation of a looped misaligned intermediate, leadingeither to nucleotide deletion (if the dislocated loop is onthe template strand) or to duplication (if the loop is on theprimer strand). Monotonic repeats and direct repeats aredosDNA (defined order sequence DNA) sequence ele-ments, unusual symmetry elements that can form alter-native DNA structures and are responsible – together withenzymes associated with DNA replication, recombinationand repair – for instability in chromosomes of prokaryoticand eukaryotic cells. These dosDNA sequence elementsfurther include inverted repeats, quasipalindromes andmirror repeats (Sinden et al., 1999). The slippage mis-alignment model has been used frequently to account forthe gain or loss of small or large sequences in bacteria(Streisinger et al., 1966; Farabaugh et al., 1978; Albertiniet al., 1982). Misalignment deletion and duplication arealso responsible for several human diseases (Krawczakand Cooper, 1991; Hu and Worton, 1992). In the p53tumour-suppressor gene in human cancer, all classes ofmutations were found, but the majority were base substi-tutions, and 10–15% of mutations were small intragenicdeletions or insertions caused by slippage misalignment(Greenblatt et al., 1996). Recently, a 23-base misalign-ment duplication mutation was detected in the TSC1 exon15 in an infant with cardiac rhabdomyomas (Smith andSperling, 1999). We also observed a case of slipped misalignment duplication in the oprL gene, coding for anouter membrane peptidoglycan-associated lipoprotein(Lim et al., 1997), in a P. pseudoalcaligenes strain. Theduplication resulted in the insertion of six additional aminoacids into the lipoprotein, with no apparent changes inphenotype (data not shown). The YG repeat in loop 7 ofgroup C is another probable case of replication misalign-ment duplication (Fig. 3). The fact that we were able towitness this type of mutation several times in a fewhundred sequences could mean that replication misalign-ment duplication plays a major role in the emergence ofnew alleles, or even new genes, in pseudomonads. Our
Table 2. Defective oprD mutations in P. aeruginosa clinical isolates.
Strain Mutation
BE128 Large deletion starting from nt 874 and covering the termination codonIS573 CÆT base substitution at nt 1018 fi premature terminationAA245 CÆT base substitution at nt 1243 fipremature terminationBU007 GÆT base substitution at nt 511 fi premature terminationHAC19 GÆA base substitution at nt 413 fi premature terminationLI010 GÆA base substitution at nt 831 fi premature terminationAA249 TÆC base substitution at nt 32 fi leucine replaced by proline in signal peptideBR670 TÆC base substitution at nt 1076 fi leucine replaced by proline in external loop 7BR718 Duplication between GCGCGG repeats (nt 573–8 and 617–22) fi frameshift fi stop codon at nt 730–2PR317 1-base duplication at monotonic repeat CCCC (nt 346–9) fi frameshift fi stop codon at nt 352–4MI162 1-base deletion at monotonic repeat CCCC (nt 346–9) fi frameshift fi stop codon at nt 379–81BO548 1-base deletion at monotonic repeat GGGGG (nt 631–5) fi frameshift fi stop codon at nt 713–5
Fig. 4. Possible mechanism for the 44-base duplication in the oprD gene of isolate BR718 involving slippage between two directrepeats (bold italic). The newly replicated single strand of DNA isdisplaced from the template and subsequently reannealed to it at the upstream copy of the direct repeat, forming a loopedmisaligned intermediate. When replication resumes, a 44-bpsequence (boxed) is duplicated, causing a frameshift, leading to apremature termination.
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results indicate that defective chromosomal oprD muta-tions emerging in vivo in clinical isolates (at the site ofinfection) are far more versatile than those selected invitro from a laboratory strain carrying the plasmid-bornePAO1 oprD gene. It is well known that a complex networkof factors influence the rate and type of mutants that can be selected under antibiotic pressure (Martinez andBaquero, 2000). The important nucleotide diversityobserved in the oprD gene is clearly one of the factorsresponsible for the large variation of mutations. The pre-sence of dosDNA and the local sequence environment(e.g. the primary and secondary DNA structure betweendirect repeats) are major factors affecting the likelihood ofmisalignment mutations (Krawczak and Cooper, 1991;Trinh and Sinden, 1993). Furthermore, differences in thestructure and sequence of the surrounding DNA – aplasmid in the laboratory strain compared with a chromo-some in the clinical isolates – are also likely to contribute.
Transcription of oprD
All imipenem-resistant isolates, except BO548, showeddecreased transcription of oprD, compared withimipenem-sensitive isolates, while harbouring an oprDmutation (Table 3). Imipenem-sensitive isolate BR642, anearlier isolate of the imipenem-resistant strain BR718, asdetermined by amplified fragment length polymorphism(AFLP), serotyping and pyoverdine typing, alreadyshowed suppressed transcription of oprD (Table 3). Assuppression of oprD transcription also occurred inciprofloxacin-sensitive strains (Table 3), we suspect theexistence of a an OprD repression mechanism, acting atthe transcriptional level, but other than the nfxC-typemutation observed in quinolone-resistant isolates andpreceding the selection of oprD mutants in most P. aeruginosa clinical isolates.
Expression of OprD
Our results confirm that loss of OprD and the presence of a potent b-lactamase – illustrated by high minimuminhibitory concentrations (MICs) for aztreonam and ceftazidime in Table 3 – are the main requisites forimipenem resistance in P. aeruginosa. All isolates with aMIC for imipenem higher than 8 mg ml-1, except isolateBR670, completely lacked OprD, as observed in sodiumdodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis(SDS-PAGE) gels of outer membrane proteins andWestern blot analysis using YD10 anti-OprD antibody(Table 3). Isolate BR670 showed a 46 kDa protein, likelyto be OprD, in SDS-PAGE, but not in Western blot. Whenusing a mixture of anti-OprD antibodies, a fuzzy band wasobserved (Fig. 5). We suspect that the substitution of Profor Leu in external loop 7 of BR670 OprD (Table 2) caused
a conformational change in the loop, hampering thepassage of carbapenems and the binding of anti-OprDantibody YD10. This demonstrates the need for cautionwhen using monoclonal antibodies, which are – by defin-ition – directed against one epitope of one (laboratory)strain. Isolates BR776 and LO053 completely lackedOprD while showing no defective oprD mutation and atrue, albeit low, oprD transcription (Table 3). We thereforesuspect that, in these two isolates, loss of OprD wascaused by an OprD repression mechanism acting at thepost-transcriptional level. Recently, Köhler et al. (1999)showed that co-regulation of OprD and the MexEF–OprNefflux system occurred at the transcriptional but also at the post-transcriptional level. Ochs et al. (1999) alsosuggested that OprD is influenced by more than onemechanism of repression.
Conclusion
Carbapenem resistance in P. aeruginosa is mediated by chromosomal b-lactamases, drug efflux pumps andmostly by diminished expression or loss of OprD. It hasbeen suggested that these mechanisms work in concertin clinical isolates (Pai et al., 2001). Expression of oprDis hampered by a seemingly unlimited number of de-fective oprD mutations and several mechanisms acting on the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level, the multiplicity and complexity of which are likely to complicate DNA-based assays for the detection of carbapenem resistance in P. aeruginosa. Jenks et al.(1999) also suggested that, although metronidazole resis-tance in Helicobacter pylori is frequently associated withmutational inactivation of the rdxA gene, other mecha-nisms of resistance are likely to exist in H. pylori. The high levels of sequence variation and intra- and possibly inter-species recombinations within oprD are not surprising.The main function of OprD is the uptake of basic amino
Fig. 5. Western blot analysis of the outer membrane proteins of P. aeruginosa strains BR670 and ATCC 27853 and E. coli strainsC644 (expressing oprD) and DH5a with a mixture of anti-OprDMAbs (A) or anti-OprD MAb YD10 (B). BR670 OprD is detectedwith the mixture of MAbs, but not with YD10. PPS, precisionprotein standards.
© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
878 J.-P. Pirnay et al.
Tab
le3.
opr
Dm
utat
ions
, le
vels
of
tran
scrip
tion
and
tran
slat
ion
of o
prD
, an
d an
tibio
tic s
usce
ptib
ilitie
s of
clin
ical
P.
aeru
gino
sais
olat
es.
MIC
d(m
gm
l–1)
ofG
eogr
aphi
cal
Sam
plin
gop
rDop
rDTr
ansc
riptio
nbP
rese
nce
Isol
ate
orig
insi
tegr
oupa
mut
atio
nof
opr
Dof
Opr
Dc
IPM
ME
MC
AZ
AT
MC
IP
AA
249
Aac
hen
(Ger
man
y)B
urn
wou
ndB
Yes
Low
No
6432
832
2M
I162
Mic
higa
n (U
SA
)B
urn
wou
ndC
2Ye
sV
ery
low
No
6416
128
128
<0.
5B
R77
6B
russ
els
(Bel
gium
)T
hroa
tB
No
Low
No
3232
128
128
4B
E12
8B
ever
wijk
(T
he N
ethe
rland
s)B
ronc
hus
C2
Yes
Low
No
328
216
<0.
5B
R71
8B
russ
els
(Bel
gium
)F
loor
AYe
sV
ery
low
No
328
416
<0.
5P
R31
7P
ragu
e (C
zech
Rep
ublic
)B
urn
wou
ndC
2Ye
sLo
wN
o16
322
3232
BU
007
Bud
apes
t (H
unga
ry)
Bur
n w
ound
C2
Yes
Low
No
1616
256
6416
BR
670
Bru
ssel
s (B
elgi
um)
Bro
nchu
sB
Yes
Low
Yese
1616
864
1A
A24
5A
ache
n (G
erm
any)
Bur
n w
ound
C2
Yes
Low
No
168
256
>25
632
LI01
0Li
sboa
(P
ortu
gal)
CF
-pat
ient
BYe
sLo
wN
o16
825
612
8<
0.5
HA
C19
Han
nove
r (G
erm
any)
CF
-pat
ient
BYe
sLo
wN
o16
832
32<
0.5
LO05
3Lo
ndon
(E
ngla
nd)
Bur
n w
ound
C2
No
Low
No
168
432
1B
O54
8B
osto
n (U
SA
)B
urn
wou
ndC
1Ye
sN
orm
alN
o16
464
32<
0.5
IS57
3Is
tanb
ul (
Turk
ey)
Bur
n w
ound
C2
Yes
Low
No
816
432
64M
I159
Mic
higa
n (U
SA
)P
ress
ure
sore
BN
oV
ery
low
Yes
84
6464
<0.
5LO
049
Lond
on (
Eng
land
)B
urn
wou
ndA
No
Ver
y lo
wYe
s8
42
82
BO
546
Bos
ton
(US
A)
Bur
n w
ound
BN
oLo
wYe
s8
2>
256
256
<0.
5B
E13
6B
ever
wijk
(T
he N
ethe
rland
s)B
ronc
hus
AN
oV
ery
low
Yes
8<
0.25
216
<0.
5B
R68
0B
russ
els
(Bel
gium
)B
urn
wou
nd‘M
utat
or’
No
Nor
mal
Yes
4<
0.25
11
<0.
5B
R64
2B
russ
els
(Bel
gium
)B
ed p
anA
No
Ver
y lo
wYe
s2
<0.
251
16<
0.5
RO
124
Rot
terd
am (
The
Net
herla
nds)
Bur
n w
ound
AN
oN
orm
alYe
s2
42
32<
0.5
BU
004
Bud
apes
t (H
unga
ry)
Thr
oat
C1
No
Nor
mal
Yes
22
14
<0.
5A
TC
C 2
7853
Bos
ton
(US
A)
Blo
odB
No
Nor
mal
Yes
21
14
<0.
5B
R25
7B
russ
els
(Bel
gium
)R
hizo
sphe
reB
No
Nor
mal
Yes
20.
51
8<
0.5
PA
O1
Mel
bour
ne (
Aus
tral
ia)
Wou
ndC
1N
oN
orm
alYe
s1
0.5
21
<0.
5
a.B
ased
on
oprD
sequ
ence
alig
nmen
t an
d cl
uste
ring.
b.
Leve
l of
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Pseudomonas oprD gene analysis 879
acids. This means that OprD is important for bacterialadaptability to changing environments, and it is knownthat such so-called contingency genes are highly mutablecompared with housekeeping genes, which are relevantfor basic bacterial metabolism and structure and whichmutate at an expected low frequency (Moxon et al., 1994).Our results highlight the need for very careful interpreta-tion of results obtained with laboratory strains. Boucheret al. (2001) recently demonstrated that strains of thesame species can differ in gene content by as much as20%. Now that the genomes of P. aeruginosa strain PAO1(Stover et al., 2000) and more than 40 other bacteria are completely sequenced (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PMGifs/Genomes/micr.html for an updated list), analysisof various clinical and environmental isolates should be encouraged. The use of large batches of clinical andenvironmental isolates, instead of laboratory strains, inmodels to predict the frequency and type of resistantmutants that may arise during therapy, will generate morereliable data.
Experimental procedures
Bacterial strains and growth conditions
The isolates used in this study were kindly provided by Dr A. T. McManus, US Army Institute of Surgical Research,Texas, USA; Dr L. Ménesi, General Hospital St. Istvan,Budapest, Hungary; Dr A. Vanderkelen, Queen Astrid MilitaryHospital, Neder-Over-Heembeek, Belgium; Dr J. A. Clark,Queen Mary’s University Hospital, London, England; Dr A. F.Vloemans, Rode Kruis Ziekenhuis, Beverwijk, The Nether-lands; Dr T. Taddonio, University of Michigan, MI, USA; Dr A. Radke, Klinik für Verbrennungs- und Plastische Wiederherstellungschirurgie, Aachen, Germany; ProfessorR. Konigova, Charles University Hospital, Prague, CzechRepublic; Dr R. G. Tompkins, Burns Institute, Shriners Hospital for Children, Boston, MA, USA; Dr B. Tümmler,Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany; Dr M.Caneira, Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisboa, Portugal; Profes-sor A. Boudabous, Science Faculty, Tunis, Tunisia; Dr M.Mergeay, Environmental Technology Expertise Centre, Mol,Belgium; Dr A. E. Lim Jr., St. Scholastica’s College of HealthSciences, Tacloban City, Philippines; Professor O. Hadjiiski,Scientific Institute of Emergency Medicine Pirogov, Sofia,Bulgaria; Professor K. Taviloglu, University of Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey; and Dr W. D. H. Hendriks, Zuiderziekenhuis,Rotterdam, The Netherlands. E. coli strain C644 was kindlyprovided by Dr R. E. W. Hancock (University of British Colum-bia, Vancouver, Canada) and P. aeruginosa strain PAO1 byDr C. K. Stover (PathoGenesis Corporation, Seattle, WA,USA). P. aeruginosa strain ATCC 27853 was purchased from Gibson Laboratories. All isolates, except 10 isolatesbelonging to clone C (Römling et al., 1994), were non-clonalas determined by the AFLP technique. Unless otherwise indicated, strains were grown on Luria–Bertani broth medium(Gibco-BRL-Life Technologies) at 37°C on a rotary shaker(150 r.p.m.).
AFLP
AFLP utilized an ABI 377 automated fluorescence sequencer(PE Applied Biosystems) and the AFLP™ Microbial Fingerprinting Kit (PE Applied Biosystems) as detailed in the manufacturers’ protocols. The enzymes used were T4DNA ligase, EcoRI and Tru9I (all purchased from RocheDiagnostics). The primer pair used was EcoRI-0/MseI-C.Band patterns were analysed using BioNumerics software(Applied Maths).
Susceptibility tests
The MIC was determined in Mueller–Hinton broth (Gibco–BRL–Life Technologies) by the broth microdilution method(Amsterdam, 1991). Microtitre plates were inoculated with afinal concentration of 2 ¥ 104 to 105 CFU ml-1 and incubatedfor 18 h at 37°C. The antibiotics and their sources were asfollows: aztreonam (ATM), S.A. Bristol-Myers Squibb; cef-tazidime (CAZ), GlaxoWellcome; ciprofloxacin (CIP), Bayer;imipenem (IPM), Merck Sharp and Dome; and meropenem(MEM), Zeneca.
Mutation frequency measurement
Mutation frequencies to rifampicin were determined forstrains BR680 and PAO1 as described by Oliver et al. (2000).In short, one bacterial colony was suspended in 20 ml ofMueller–Hinton broth (MHB) and incubated overnight at37°C. Bacterial cells were collected at 3000 r.p.m. for 5 minand resuspended in 1 ml of MHB. One hundred microlitresamples of 10-fold dilutions were plated onto Mueller–Hintonagar (Gibco-BRL-Life Technologies) plates, with and withoutrifampicin (300 mg ml-1). Colony counting was performed after36 h. Experiments were performed in triplicate.
PCR and sequencing of the oprD gene
DNA was extracted from overnight P. aeruginosa culturesusing the High Pure™ PCR Template Preparation Kit (RocheDiagnostics) according to the manufacturer’s guidelines.
The oprD gene was amplified by polymerase chain reaction(PCR), using primers pDF1 (5¢-ATGAAAGTGATGAAGTGGAGC-3¢) and pDR1 (5¢-CAGGATCGACAGCGGATAGT-3¢), derived from the published oprD nucleotide sequence(Yoneyama et al., 1992). PCR was performed in 200 ml microcentrifuge tubes. The PCR mixture (50 ml final volume)contained the following: 25.5 ml of sterile distilled water, 5 ml of 10¥ PCR buffer (500 mmol l-1 KCl and 100 mmol l-1 Tris-HCl, pH 8.3), 4 ml of a deoxynucleotide mixture (dGTP, dTTP,dATP and dCTP; 2 mmol l-1 each), 5 ml of MgCl2 (2.5 mmol l-1),2.5 ml of primer pDF1 (10 mmol l-1), 2.5 ml of primer pDR1 (2.5 mmol l-1), 5 ml of template DNA and 0.5 ml of AmpliTaq DNA polymerase (5 U ml-1). All PCR reagents and primerswere ordered from PE-Applied Biosystems. The amplificationwas performed in a GeneAmp® PCR system 2400 (PE Applied Biosystems). The amplification programme was set at 50 cycles of denaturation at 94°C for 30 s, annealing at50°C for 30 s and elongation at 72°C for 1 min The reactionmixture was put on an agarose gel of 1.5% (w/v) for elec-
© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd, Environmental Microbiology, 4, 872–882
trophoresis and visualization of the PCR product after stain-ing with ethidium bromide on a transilluminator. The DNAband corresponding to the amplified oprD gene was excisedfrom the agarose gel with a clean scalpel. DNA was extractedfrom the gel slice using the QIAEX II Gel Extraction Kit (Westburg) according to the manufacturer’s recommenda-tions. Five microlitres of the purified PCR fragment was usedas a template in the sequencing reaction. Sequencing of thecoding and anticoding strand of the oprD PCR productsnecessitated two additional internal primers, pDF2 (5¢-AACCTCAGCGCCTCCCT-3¢) and pDR2 (5¢-AGGGAGGCGCTGAGGTT-3¢). DNA sequencing utilized an ABI 377 automatedfluorescence sequencer (PE Applied Biosystems) and the ABI Prism® BigDye™ Terminator Cycle Sequencing ReadyReaction Kit (PE Applied Biosystems) as detailed in the manufacturers’ protocols. The oprD gene of isolate BE128was sequenced directly from genomic DNA. PCR and se-quencing were performed in duplicate in order to be able todetect eventual PCR mistakes. Sequences were aligned andclustered using the unweighted pair group method using arithmetic averages (UPGMA) and BioNumerics software(Applied Maths).
Reverse transcriptase PCR of oprD mRNA
RNA was extracted from overnight cultures using the HighPure™ RNA Isolation Kit (Roche Diagnostics) according tothe manufacturer’s guidelines. Extracted RNA was quantifiedspectrophotometrically at 260 nm. One microgram of RNAwas used as template for the reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCRreaction. The Titan™ One Tube RT-PCR System (RocheDiagnostics) was used. RT-PCR was performed in 200 mlmicrocentrifuge tubes. The RT-PCR mixture (50 ml finalvolume) contained the following: 23.25 µl of sterile distilledwater, 10 ml of 5¥ RT-PCR buffer, 4 ml of a deoxynucleotidemixture (dGTP, dTTP, dATP and dCTP; 2 mmol l-1 each), 5 mlof MgCl2 (2.5 mmol l-1), 2 ml of primer pDF1 (10 mmol ml-1), 2 ml of primer pDR1 (pDR2 for strain BE128) (10 mmol l-1), 5ml of template RNA, 2.5 ml of dithiothreitol (100 mM), 0.25 mlof RNase inhibitor (40 U ml-1) and 1 ml of Enzyme Mix. All RT-PCR reagents were ordered from Roche Diagnostics.Reverse transcription and amplification were performed in aGeneAmp® PCR system 2400 (PE Applied Biosystems).Reverse transcription was performed at 50°C for 30 min. The amplification programme was set at 35 cycles of denaturation at 94°C for 30 s, annealing at 49°C for 30 s andelongation at 68°C for 1 min (after 10 cycles an additionalelongation of 5 s was added to each cycle). Absence of con-taminating DNA was examined by PCR, without precedentRT reaction. No amplification product was obtained. Labora-tory strain ATCC 27853 and imipenem-sensitive isolatesBU004, RO124, and BR257, 642 and 680 were included asreferences.
Outer membrane protein preparation, SDS-PAGE andWestern blot analysis
Outer membranes were prepared by the Sarkosyl solubiliza-tion method (Filip et al., 1973) as previously described (Cornelis et al., 1989). The proteins were solubilized in
sample buffer, heated at 99°C for 5 min and separated bySDS-PAGE (12% precast criterion gels, Bio-Rad). The gelswere stained with Coomassie blue (Bio-Rad). Bio-Rad preci-sion protein standards were used as molecular weightmarkers. For the Western blot analysis, electrophoresedouter membrane proteins were electrophoretically transferredto a nitrocellulose membrane (Amersham–Pharmacia–Biotech). Anti-OprD antibody YD10 (Ochs et al., 1999) wasused as primary antibody, except for strain BR670, in whicha mixture of YD03, 11, 12, and17 antibodies was used. Alkaline phosphatase-conjugated goat antibody to mouseimmunoglobulin G (Sigma) was used as the secondary antibody. For colour development, NBT/BCP (Innogenetics)was used. Escherichia coli strains C644, expressing oprD,and DH5a were used as a control.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to N. Gotoh (Department of Microbiology,Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, Kyoto, Japan) for providinganti-OprD antibodies and to all the collectors and providersof the bacterial isolates used in this study. We also thank M. Denoyette and A. Kholti for assistance with Western blotanalysis. This work was supported by the ‘Alphonse and JeanForton Fund’ and grants JSM-R and T G98/02 from theBelgian Department of Defense.
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