JAC Advance Access originally published online on February 11, 2003
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Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (2003) 51, 703-706
© 2003 The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
The vanC-3 vancomycin resistance gene cluster of Enterococcus flavescens CCM 439
Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QW, UK
Received 16 September 2002; returned 4 November 2002; revised 20 December 2002; accepted 20 December 2002
Enterococcus flavescens CCM 439 is phenotypically similar to Enterococcus casseliflavus; it possesses intrinsic low-level resistance to vancomycin and has the VanC phenotype. The complete vanC-3 vancomycin resistance gene cluster was cloned and sequenced, and found to contain five open reading frames. These encoded five proteins that displayed a high degree of amino acid identity to the proteins of the vanC-2 cluster of E. casseliflavus. The serine racemases displayed the lowest degree of identity (97%), whereas the response regulators VanRC-2 and VanRC-3 were 100% identical. Long-PCR-RFLP analysis of the vanC-3 and vanC-2 gene clusters distinguished E. flavescens CCM 439 from E. casseliflavus ATCC 25788 due to the absence of a single EcoRV restriction endonuclease site from the E. flavescens gene cluster. However, the lack of nucleotide divergence between the sequences of the vanC-2 and vanC-3 clusters casts doubt on the validity of E. flavescens and E. casseliflavus being classed as distinct species.
Keywords: Enterococcus flavescens, vanC-3, vancomycin resistance
* Corresponding author. Tel: +44-1223-333644; Fax: +44-1223-333345; E-mail: per{at}mole.bio.cam.ac.uk
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