MCR-1
mobilized colistin resistance gene/protein
The mobilized colistin resistance (mcr) gene confers plasmid-mediated resistance to colistin, one of a number of last-resort antibiotics for treating Gram-negative infections. mcr-1, the original variant, is capable of horizontal transfer between different strains of a bacterial species. After discovery in November 2015 in E. coli (strain SHP45) from a pig in China it has been found in Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter aerogenes, and Enterobacter cloacae. As of 2017, it has been detected in more than 30 countries on 5 continents in less than a year.
Description
The "mobilized colistin resistance" (mcr-1) gene confers plasmid-mediated resistance to colistin, a polymyxin and one of a number of last-resort antibiotics for treating infections. The gene is found in no less than ten species of the Enterobacteriaceae: Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter aerogenes, Enterobacter cloacae, Cronobacter sakazakii, Shigella sonnei, Kluyvera species, Citrobacter species, and Raoultella ornithinolytica.
The mechanism of resistance of the MCR gene is a lipid A phosphoethanolamine transferase. The enzyme transfers a phosphoethanolamine residue to the lipid A present in the cell membrane of gram-negative bacteria. The altered lipid A has much lower affinity for colistin and related polymyxins resulting in reduced activity of the antimicrobial. This type of resistance is known as target modification.
“MCR-1” enters the record as mobilized colistin resistance gene/protein. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what MCR-1, mobilized and colistin can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “MCR-1” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.