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Assessment of environmental enterococci: bacterial antagonism, pathogenic capacity and antibiotic resistance

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Abstract

The properties of 166 environmental strains belonging to the seven enterococcal species were studied. Enterococci originated mainly from surface- and waste-waters. They were screened for the presence of enterocins, virulence factors, and antibiotic resistance. The presence of different enterocin genes (entA, entB, entP, ent31, entL50AB) was frequently observed in our enterococcal isolates, 109 strains contained at least one enterocin gene. The distribution of enterocin genes varied according to the species, the genes were present mainly in E. hirae and E. faecium. By enterocin spot assay, 10 isolates inhibited the growth of Listeria strains. To evaluate the pathogenic ability of isolates, the distribution of selected virulence genes (cylA, gelE and esp) was investigated, eleven strains were positive in some of these genes, five of them belonged to E. faecalis. Regarding the antibiotic resistance of isolates, only two strains were multiresistant and two strains (E. hirae and E. casseliflavus) were resistant to vancomycin.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the State Program for Research and Development of the Slovak Republic “Food quality and safety” No: 2003SP270280E010280E01, “Enterococcus spp. strains originated in food, investigation and application of their variability”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular Biology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 21, 84551, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

    Domenico Pangallo, Jana Harichová, Edita Karelová, Katarína Chovanová, Peter Ferianc, Ján Turňa & Jozef Timko

  2. Department of Molecular Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Commenius University, Mlynska dolina B-2, 842 15, Bratislava 4, Slovak Republic

    Hana Drahovská & Ján Turňa

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  1. Domenico Pangallo
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  2. Hana Drahovská
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Correspondence to Domenico Pangallo.

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Pangallo, D., Drahovská, H., Harichová, J. et al. Assessment of environmental enterococci: bacterial antagonism, pathogenic capacity and antibiotic resistance. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 94, 555–562 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-008-9272-9

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