Phylogenetic relatedness determined between antibiotic resistance and 16S rRNA genes in actinobacteria
Abstract
Ninety actinobacteria strains isolated at contrasting soil sites were characterized phylogenetically by 16S rRNA gene, for presence of erm and ABC transporter resistance genes. An analogous analysis was performed in silico with 246 and 31 strains from Integrated Microbial Genomes (JGI_IMG) database selected by the presence of ABC transporter genes and erm genes, respectively.
In the isolates, distances of erm gene sequences were significantly correlated to phylogenetic distances based on 16S rRNA genes, while ABC transporter gene distances were not. In the analysis of JGI_IMG datasets the correlation between phylogeny of resistance genes and the strain phylogeny was observed for both the erm genes and ABC transporter genes in both actinobacteria and streptomycetes.