Journal
ANTIMICROBIAL AGENTS AND CHEMOTHERAPY
Volume 50, Issue 6, Pages 1913-1920Publisher
AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY
DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00869-05
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Assessing bacterial viability by molecular markers might help accelerate the measurement of antibiotic-induced killing. This study investigated whether rRNA could be suitable for this purpose. Cultures of penicillin-susceptible and penicillin-tolerant (Tol1 mutant) Streptococcus gordonii were exposed to mechanistically different penicillin and levofloxacin. Bacterial survival was assessed by viable counts and compared to quantitative real-time PCR amplification of either the 16S rRNA genes or the 16S rRNA, following reverse transcription. Penicillin-susceptible S. gordonii lost >= 4 log(10) CFU/ml of viability over 48 h of penicillin treatment. In comparison, the Tol1 mutant lost <= 1 log(10) CFU/ml. Amplification of a 427-bp fragment of 16S rRNA genes yielded amplicons that increased proportionally to viable counts during bacterial growth but did not decrease during drug-induced killing. In contrast, the same 427-bp fragment amplified from 16S rRNA paralleled both bacterial growth and drug-induced killing. It also differentiated between penicillin-induced killing of the parent and the Tol1 mutant (>= 4 log(10) CFU/ml and <= 1 log(10) CFU/ml, respectively) and detected killing by mechanistically unrelated levofloxacin. Since large fragments of polynucleotides might be degraded faster than smaller fragments, the experiments were repeated by amplifying a 119-bp region internal to the original 427-bp fragment. The amount of 119-bp amplicons increased proportionally to viability during growth but remained stable during drug treatment. Thus, 16S rRNA was a marker of antibiotic-induced killing, but the size of the amplified fragment was critical for differentiation between live and dead bacteria.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available