Fornefeld, Eva

Jechalke, Sven

Reimann, Katja

Smalla, Kornelia

English

JKI Open Journal Systems (Julius Kühn-Institut)

Nachwuchswissenschaftlerforum / Young Scientists Meeting 2013 Fornefeld et al.     Characterization and quantification of anti-biotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements on fresh produce  Eva Fornefeld, Sven Jechalke, Katja Reimann and Kornelia Smalla Julius Kühn-Institut, Institute for Epidemiology and Pathogen Diagnostics, Braunschweig Email of corresponding author: eva.fornefeld@jki.bund.de  Enterobacteria, especially human pathogens consumed with raw fresh produce can cause human illnesses. As foodborne outbreaks associated with fruits and vegetables are a growing concern, there is a need to further in-vestigate the dissemination of human pathogens to plants and understand the factors influencing their survival on the surface and inside of plants. Espe-cially the aspect of internalization into plant tissues is not entirely understood. Putative factors influencing the coloni-zation of plants by human pathogens may be the presence of resistance genes and mobile genetic elements like plasmids.  Fresh produce from supermarkets was screened for occurrence of enterobac-teria, antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements. The bacterial communities of lettuce, corn salad, ci-lantro and fresh-cut salad were com-pared using culture-dependent and -independent methods.  Antibiotic resistant bacteria, mobile genetic elements and resistance genes were found to be widespread on fresh produce. The incidence of Enterobacte-ria and resistant bacteria differed be-tween plant species with the highest numbers found on cilantro. E. coli were detected in a few samples and no Sal-monella. Among the resistance genes detected were sul1 and sul2. These genes confer resistance to sulfona-mides, which are widely used in veteri-nary medicine. Furthermore the qacE gene was detected, which encodes for resistance against quaternary ammo-nium compounds that are used as disin-fectants in food producing and clinical environments. QacE genes are often found on integrons, clinically important genetic elements which are able to in-tegrate and exchange gene cassettes. Among the mobile genetic elements on fresh produce classI integrons were found in high prevalence. Also plasmids of the IncP-1 incompatibility group were detected in some of the samples. These plasmids have a broad host spec-trum and are able to transfer resistance genes among almost all Gram-negative bacteria including human pathogens. Mobile genetic elements often carry more than one resistance gene which can lead to co-selection and therefore spreading of different resistances.  In summary, resistance genes and mo-bile genetic elements were detected on fresh produce which might serve also as reservoir for human pathogens. The influence they might have on survival and spread of human pathogens needs to be investigated in further experi-ments to avoid produce-related ill-nesses. 40 Berichte aus dem Julius Kühn-Institut 171

Characterization and quantification of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements on fresh produce

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Characterization and quantification of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements on fresh produce

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