Antibiotic resistances in Enterobacteria

Beschreibung

Atypical Enterobacteria are frequently misidentified in clinical diagnostics due to unsettled taxonomy and noisy reference databases. Despite of their environmental origin, they regularly appear in clinical samples and increasingly display multi-drug resistances (MDRs) that are acquired during adaptation to the nosocomial environment. Failure to provide a consistent identification inevitably results in the impossibility to recognize connections between seemingly independent clinical episodes and to implement proper surveillance and sanitary countermeasures. In this project, we aim (1) to accurately identify isolates collected during routine hospital environmental surveillance using mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), Multi-Locus Sequence Analysis (MLSA) and whole-genome sequencing (WGS); (2) to investigate the mechanisms by which these bacteria acquire antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs); and (3) to identify genomic regions that can be used as targets to design efficient molecular tests for the detection of recurring species in clinical samples, to improve quality and speed of diagnosis.