Abstract
Acinetobacter baumannii is classified as a top priority pathogen by the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its widespread resistance to all classes of antibiotics. This makes the need for understanding the mechanisms of resistance and virulence critical. Therefore, tools that allow genetic manipulations are vital to unravel the mechanisms of multidrug resistance (MDR) and virulence in A. baumannii. A host of current strategies are available for genetic manipulations of A. baumannii laboratory-strains, including ATCC® 17978TM and ATCC® 19606T, but depending on susceptibility profiles, these strategies may not be sufficient when targeting strains newly obtained from clinic, primarily due to the latter’s high resistance to antibiotics that are commonly used for selection during genetic manipulations. This review highlights the most recent methods for genetic manipulation of A. baumannii including CRISPR based approaches, transposon mutagenesis, homologous recombination strategies, reporter systems and complementation techniques with the spotlight on those that can be applied to MDR clinical isolates.
Highlights
Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen causing disease in critically ill patients
A host of current strategies are beneficial in manipulation of A. baumannii laboratory-strains, including ATCC R 17978TM and ATCC R 19606T, but may be insufficient when targeting strains obtained from hospitals and patients more recently, primarily due to their high resistance to antibiotics and the genomic diversity of A. baumannii (Diancourt et al, 2010; Zarrilli et al, 2013)
Genetic tools including the use of non-clinical antibiotic markers as well as those utilizing non-antibiotic markers have been generated for clinical strains of A. baumannii (Trebosc et al, 2016, 2019; Ducas-Mowchun et al, 2019; Lucidi et al, 2019)
Summary
Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen causing disease in critically ill patients. This review compiles challenges with designing genetic tools for antibiotic resistant clinical isolates of A. baumannii as well as new developments in the field including highthroughput screening and genome editing such as CRISPR.
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