Infectious multiple drug resistance / S. Falkow.

  • Falkow, Stanley.
Date:
1975
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Infectious multiple drug resistance / S. Falkow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    6 Chapter 1 The first comprehensive introduction of R-factors to the Western world was the review of Watanabe, which appeared in 1963. While this paper was in the press, Naomi Datta reported in 1962 that R-factors were present in Salmonella typhimurium strains isolated in England. In Germany, Gerhard Lebek discovered that R-factors were quite prevalent among enteropathogenic E. coli strains. Lebek also found that R-factors could include resistance to the antibiotics of the kanamycin-neomycin (Km) group. Thus within eight years of the first detection of a multiply resistant strain in Japan, the problem of infectious multiple-drug resistance was recognized as a world-wide problem with broad implications to medicine and of considerable genetic interest. Not only do R-factors render their hosts resistant to a number of antimicrobial agents but, at the same time, they give their hosts the ability to transmit this resistance to other bacteria. From the time of the discovery of transferable drug resistance, it was recognized that this phenomenon bore a similarity to the previously described transfer of chromosomal genes by the F-factor of E. coli and to the genetic elements determining the transfer of colicinogeny. As we shall see, the R-factors do indeed closely resemble these elements, so before one can consider, in detail, the particular genetic properties of R-factors, it is necessary to examine the general biology of genetic elements in bacteria that promote conjugation, and some cleverly disguised analogues which do not. General references Some reviews and books which are good general references and trace the development of thought about R-factors. Datta, N., 1965, Infectious drug resistance, Brit. Med. Bull, 21, 254. Lebek, G., 1969, Die infektiöse bakterielle Antibiotikaresistenz (Hans Huber, Bern). Mitsuhashi, S., 1965, Transmissible drug-resistance factor R, Gunma J. Med. Sci., 14, 169. Mitsuhashi, S., 1970, Review; The R factors,/. Infect. Diseases, 119, 89. Mitsuhashi, S., 1971, Transferable Drug Resistance Factor R (University Park Press, Baltimore). Watanabe, T., 1966, Infectious drug resistance in enteric bacteria, New Engl J. Med, 275, 888. Watanabe, T., 1969, Transferable drug resistance: the nature of the problem, Ciba Symp. Bacterial Episomes and Plasmids (Churchill, London), pp.81-97. 1.1 Mutation is not the only answer Barber, M., 1949, The incidence of penicillin sensitive variant colonies in penicillinase producing strains of Staphylococcus aureus'', J. Gen. Microbiol, 3, 274. Cavalli Sforza, L. L, Lederberg, J., 1953, Genetics of resistance to bacterial inhibitors, in Growth Inhibition and Chemotherapy (Guiseppe, Rome), pp.108-142. Luria, S. E., Delbrück, M., 1943, Mutations of bacteria from virus sensitivity to virus resistance. Genetics, 28, 491. Lederberg, J., Lederberg, E. M., 1952, Replica plating and indirect selection of bacterial mutants, J. Bacteriol, 63, 399.