Molecular characterization of plasmids encoding CTX-M-15 -lactamases from Escherichia coli strains in the United Kingdom
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The UK, like other countries worldwide, has a growing problem with CTX-M beta-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli. Five major clonally related strains have been identified among CTX-M-15 producers. We characterize here the plasmids from clonal strains A and D. METHODS: Plasmids were extracted and transformed into E. coli DH5alpha; conjugative mating was attempted on agar. MICs were determined by agar dilution. beta-Lactamases were typed by isoelectric focusing; antibiotic resistance genes and integrons were identified by PCR and sequenced. Plasmid incompatibility groups were determined by replicon PCR. RESULTS: bla(CTX-M-15) was carried by a 150 kb plasmid in strain A and a 70 kb plasmid in strain D. Conjugative transfer of cefotaxime resistance was only achieved from strain D; plasmids from both strains were transferred by transformation. The plasmid from strain A additionally carried bla(TEM-1) (variably), bla(OXA-1), aac(6')-Ib-cr and tet(A), as well as a class 1 integron with the gene cassettes aadA5 and dfr(17); the plasmid from strain D carried bla(TEM-1) consistently, also bla(OXA-1), aac(6')-Ib-cr, aac3-IIa and tet(A). Both plasmids belonged to incompatibility group FII. CONCLUSIONS: bla(CTX-M-15) was plasmid-mediated in both strains A and D and was linked to other antibiotic resistance genes including aac(6')-Ib-cr, which encodes an acetyltransferase, not previously found in Europe, acting on both aminoglycosides and some fluoroquinolones. Although the plasmids from the two strains differed in size, both were related and conferred similar multi-drug resistance phenotypes, suggesting that they may share a similar genetic scaffold. Both shared features with plasmids encoding CTX-M-15 beta-lactamases in E. coli from Canada and India.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".