The emergence of carbapenemase-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae strains has triggered the use of old antibiotics such as colistin. This is driving the emergence of colistin resistance in multidrug-resistant strains that underlie life-threatening infections. This study analyses the mutational diversity of 22 genes associated with colistin resistance in 140 K. pneumoniae clinical isolates integrated in a high-reso...
Portugal is a low incidence country for tuberculosis (TB) disease. Now figuring among TB low incidence countries, it has since the 1990s reported multidrug resistant and extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB cases, driven predominantly by two strain-types: Lisboa3 and Q1. This study describes the largest characterization of the evolutionary trajectory of M/XDR-TB strains in Portugal, spanning a time-period of two...
Background: Approximately 10% of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome is made up of two families of genes that are poorly characterized due to their high GC content and highly repetitive nature. The PE and PPE families are typified by their highly conserved N-terminal domains that incorporate proline-glutamate (PE) and proline-proline-glutamate (PPE) signature motifs. They are hypothesised to be important viru...