Characterization of Plasmids in Extensively Drug-Resistant Acinetobacter Strains Isolated in India and Pakistan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The blaNDM-1 gene is associated with extensive drug resistance in Gram-negative bacteria. This probably spread to Enterobacteriaceae from Acinetobacter spp., and we characterized plasmids associated with blaNDM-1 in Acinetobacter spp. to gain insight into their role in this dissemination. Four clinical NDM-1-producing Acinetobacter species strains from India and Pakistan were investigated. A plasmid harboring blaNDM-1, pNDM-40-1, was characterized by whole-genome sequencing of Acinetobacter bereziniae CHI-40-1 and comparison with related plasmids. The presence of similar plasmids in strains from Pakistan was sought by PCR and sequencing of amplicons. Conjugation frequency was tested and stability of pNDM-40-1 investigated by real-time PCR of isolates passaged with and without antimicrobial selection pressure. A. bereziniae and Acinetobacter haemolyticus strains contained plasmids similar to the pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids identified in Acinetobacter spp. in China. The backbone of pNDM-40-1 was almost identical to that of pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids, but the transposon harboring blaNDM-1, Tn125, contained two short deletions. Escherichia coli and Acinetobacter pittii transconjugants were readily obtained. Transconjugants retained pNDM-40-1 after a 14-day passage experiment, although stability was greater with meropenem selection. Fragments of pNDM-BJ01-like plasmid backbones are found near blaNDM-1 in some genetic contexts from Enterobacteriaceae, suggesting that cross-genus transfer has occurred. pNDM-BJ01-like plasmids have been described in isolates originating from a wide geographical region in southern Asia. In vitro data on plasmid transfer and stability suggest that these plasmids could have contributed to the spread of blaNDM-1 into Enterobacteriaceae.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".