Environmental and genetic determinants of plasmid mobility in pathogenic <i>Escherichia coli</i>
Jonathan H. Bethke, Adam Davidovich, Li Cheng, Allison J. Lopatkin, Wenchen Song, Joshua T. Thaden, Vance G. Fowler, Minfeng Xiao, Lingchong You
Abstract
pathogens. We find a substantial proportion of these pathogens (>25%) able to readily spread resistance to the most common classes of antibiotics. Antibiotics of varied modes of action had less than a 5-fold effect on conjugation efficiency in general, with one exception displaying 31-fold promotion upon exposure to macrolides and chloramphenicol. In contrast, genome sequencing reveals plasmid incompatibility group strongly correlates with transfer efficiency. Our findings offer new insights into the determinants of plasmid mobility and have implications for the development of treatments that target HGT.