Spanish Research Team Sequence Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria from Hospital Outbreak

A team of researchers from the Hospital Universitario La Paz Research Institute (IdiPAZ, Madrid), LifeSequencing S.L. (Valencia), Era7 Bioinformatics (Madrid) and Roche Spain (Barcelona) has announced today the sequencing of the whole genome of three antibiotic resistant strains of Klebsiella pneunomiae isolated from a recent outbreak in a Spanish hospital.

Klebsiella pneunomiae is a bacterium found in the mouth and gut of healthy humans. In most instances the bacterium does not cause disease, however it can mutate opportunistically and cause diverse types of infections. Klebsiella pneunomiae also has a significant capacity to acquire antibiotic resistance. Three closely related isolates of a pathogenic strain of K. pneumonia with increasing degrees of antibiotic resistance, were obtained in the Microbiology department at Hospital Universitario La Paz and sequenced at LifeSequencing in Valencia, Spain using the long read GS FLX+ System, developed by 454 Life Sciences, a Roche Company.

The sequencing data was assembled using the GS De Novo Assembler software and functional annotation was performed to identify the relevant genes codified in the three genomes with BG7, the optimized system developed by Era 7 Bioinformatics, providing rich functional annotation of 454 Sequencing data.

The researchers found that the three bacteria strains showed an increasing resistance pattern to a wide range of the antibiotics most commonly used at the hospital. Comparison of the genomes will give insights regarding how antibiotic resistance evolves within K. pneumonia and will aid in efforts to reduce the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance worldwide. In addition, the comparison of these genomes with other previously studied bacteria will help to understand how a microorganism that is part of our normal microbiome can become a dangerous pathogen.

“Fast and affordable sequencing of pathogenic bacteria is a huge qualitative and quantitative advance that is radically changing the way researchers and clinicians view the infectious disease process,” said Dr. Jesús Mingorance lead researcher at the Hospital Universitario La Paz. The GS FLX+ and GS Junior Systems from Roche are aiding in these pathogen detection and bacterial comparative genomics efforts worldwide.