Department of Microbiology, University of Barcelona, Diagonal 643, Annex, Floor 0, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Future Microbiol. 2013 Jun;8(6):739-51. doi: 10.2217/fmb.13.32.
The idea that bacteriophage transduction plays a role in the horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes is gaining momentum. Such transduction might be vital in horizontal transfer from environmental to human body-associated biomes and here we review many lines of evidence supporting this notion. It is well accepted that bacteriophages are the most abundant entities in most environments, where they have been shown to be quite persistent. This fact, together with the ability of many phages to infect bacteria belonging to different taxa, makes them suitable vehicles for gene transfer. Metagenomic studies confirm that substantial percentages of the bacteriophage particles present in most environments contain bacterial genes, including mobile genetic elements and antibiotic resistance genes. When specific genes of resistance to antibiotics are detected by real-time PCR in the bacteriophage populations of different environments, only tenfold lower numbers of these genes are observed, compared with those found in the corresponding bacterial populations. In addition, the antibiotic resistance genes from these bacteriophages are functional and generate resistance to the bacteria when these genes are transfected. Finally, reports about the transduction of antibiotic resistance genes are on the increase.
噬菌体转导在抗生素耐药基因的水平转移中发挥作用的观点正在得到越来越多的关注。这种转导可能对环境到人体相关生物群落中的水平转移至关重要，我们在这里回顾了许多支持这一观点的证据。噬菌体是大多数环境中最丰富的实体，这一点已被广泛接受，并且已经证明它们具有很强的持久性。再加上许多噬菌体能够感染不同分类群的细菌，这使它们成为基因转移的合适载体。宏基因组学研究证实，在大多数环境中存在的大量噬菌体颗粒中含有细菌基因，包括可移动遗传元件和抗生素耐药基因。当通过实时 PCR 在不同环境中的噬菌体群体中检测到抗生素耐药性的特定基因时，与在相应的细菌群体中发现的基因相比，这些基因的数量要低 10 倍。此外，这些噬菌体中的抗生素耐药基因是有功能的，并且当这些基因被转染时，会赋予细菌耐药性。最后，关于抗生素耐药基因转导的报告也在增加。
