Electron micrograph of Acinetobacter baumannii (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ; Wikimedia)

    Acinetobacter baumannii is a non-fermentative Gram-negative bacterium that has emerged as an important pathogen responsible for serious infections and nosocomial outbreaks in Europe and the USA. However, the ecological origin of A. baumannii remains unknown and it is not a common member of the normal human bacterial flora. A. baumannii is part of a complex of species that also includes the soil bacterium Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. This complex is referred to as the A. calcoaceticus-A. baumannii (ACB) complex.

In a previous collaboration with Genoscope, Fournier et al. [1] identified the largest known 86-kb resistance island in the genome of an epidemic MDR A. baumannii with a 26% mortality rate.
The present study aims at exploring the generality of this finding, and better understand the remarkable ability of A. baumanni to rapidly acquire multiple resistances to antibiotics and antiseptics in hospital environments. This project is coordinated by the Structural and Genomic Information laboratory (Prof. J-M Claverie, Marseille, France) and associates 3 clinical microbiology laboratories (Prof. P. Normann, Le-Kremlin-Bicêtre, France ; Prof. Harald Seifert, Köln, Germany; Prof. J. Vila, Barcelona, Spain) responsible for the strains isolation and choice.

Reference:
[1] Fournier PE, Vallenet D, Barbe V, Audic S, Ogata H, Poirel L, Richet H, Robert C, Mangenot S, Abergel C, Nordmann P, Weissenbach J, Raoult D, Claverie JM. (2006)
Comparative Genomics of Multidrug Resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii.
PLoS Genet. 13: e7