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Survival in amoeba—a major selection pressure on the presence of bacterial copper and zinc resistance determinants? Identification of a “copper pathogenicity island”

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Abstract

The presence of metal resistance determinants in bacteria usually is attributed to geological or anthropogenic metal contamination in different environments or associated with the use of antimicrobial metals in human healthcare or in agriculture. While this is certainly true, we hypothesize that protozoan predation and macrophage killing are also responsible for selection of copper/zinc resistance genes in bacteria. In this review, we outline evidence supporting this hypothesis, as well as highlight the correlation between metal resistance and pathogenicity in bacteria. In addition, we introduce and characterize the “copper pathogenicity island” identified in Escherichia coli and Salmonella strains isolated from copper- and zinc-fed Danish pigs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Center for Environmental and Agricultural Microbiology (CREAM) funded by the Villum Kann Rasmussen Foundation.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Compliance with ethical standards

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, People’s Republic of China

    Xiuli Hao, Yong-Guan Zhu & Christopher Rensing

  2. Department of Plant and Environmental Science, University of Copenhagen, 1871, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Freja L. Lüthje, Yanan Qin, Siyu Zhang & Christopher Rensing

  3. Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA

    Sylvia Franke McDevitt

  4. Division of Dermatology and Venereology, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Nataliya Lutay

  5. School of Biosciences, The University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Sutton Bonington, LE12 5RD, UK

    Jon L. Hobman & Karishma Asiani

  6. Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Rosario (IBR-CONICET, UNR), 2000, Rosario, Argentina

    Fernando C. Soncini

  7. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Amarillo, Texas

    Nadezhda German

  8. State Key Lab of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, People’s Republic of China

    Siyu Zhang & Yong-Guan Zhu

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  1. Xiuli Hao
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  2. Freja L. Lüthje
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  3. Yanan Qin
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  9. Nadezhda German
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  10. Siyu Zhang
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  11. Yong-Guan Zhu
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  12. Christopher Rensing
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Correspondence to Christopher Rensing.

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Hao, X., Lüthje, F.L., Qin, Y. et al. Survival in amoeba—a major selection pressure on the presence of bacterial copper and zinc resistance determinants? Identification of a “copper pathogenicity island”. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 5817–5824 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6749-0

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