Young researcher Vita Rozman presented the results of her research on the resistance of lactic acid bacteria (MKB) and bifidobacteria to antimicrobials at the 8th Congress of European Microbiologists (Glasgow, Scotland). The problem is of interest from the point of view of food safety, since such bacteria, intentionally introduced into foods to provide the desired sensory properties or beneficial effects on host health, can act as an antimicrobial resistance (AR) reservoir. With a phenotypic and in silico approach, she examined 20 representatives of probiotic or starter cultures widespread in the market, as well as investigated the publicly accessible sequences of their genomes and the genomes of many other representatives of these species (n = 1423). Several strains showed phenotypic resistance to kanamycin, tetracycline, chloramphenicol, quinupristine-dalfopristin, ciprofloxacin and neomycin, but these resistances did not always correspond to the presence of ARG and vice versa. The author emphasized the prevalence of the tetW gene, often accompanied by mobile genetic elements (MGEs), which can contribute to the horizontal transfer of ARG between bacteria, in the analyzed bifidobacteria (31.9%) and in lactobacilli (6.3%).
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
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