Integrated Co-functional Network Analysis on the Resistance and Virulence Features in Acinetobacter baumannii

Abstract

Acinetobacter baumannii is one of the most troublesome bacterial pathogens that pose major public health threats due to its rapidly increasing drug resistance property. It is not only derived from clinic setting but also emerges from aquaculture as a fish pathogen, which could pass the resistant genes in the food chain. Understanding the mechanism of antibiotic resistance development and pathogenesis will aid our battle with the infections caused by A. baumannii. In this study, we constructed a co-functional network by integrating multiple sources of data from A. baumannii and then used the k-shell decomposition to analyze the co-functional network. We found that genes involving in basic cellular physiological function, including genes for antibiotic resistance, tended to have high k-shell values and locate in the internal layer of our network. In contrast, the non-essential genes, such as genes associated with virulence, tended to have lower k-shell values and locate in the external layer. This finding allows us to fish out the potential antibiotic resistance factors and virulence factors. In addition, we constructed an online platform ABviresDB (https://acba.shinyapps.io/ABviresDB/) for visualization of the network and features of each gene in A. baumannii. The network analysis in this study will not only aid the study on A. baumannii but also could be referenced for the research of antibiotic resistance and pathogenesis in other bacteria.

MALDI-TOF MS profiling of piscine Acinetobacter species from wastewater-related waters

“…Acinetobacter species covered in the MALDI Biotyper 3.0 database (Bruker Daltonik). Species commonly isolated from fish (Xie et al, 2020;Austin and Austin, 2007) are in boldface type.…”

Panomics to decode virulence and fitness in Gram-negative bacteria

“…The loss of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) caused by ISAba1 insertion in lpxC was identified in their investigation as the resistance mechanism of the colistin-resistant strain. Through the integration of various data sources, including the co-expression, operon organization, and associated protein structural data of genes in A. baumannii ( Xie et al., 2020 ), a co-functional network was built with potential AMR and virulence related features.…”

Virulence Potential and Treatment Options of Multidrug-Resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii

“…Infections due to A. baumannii are recently emerging particularly in the hospital setting and constitute a challenge for clinicians to tackle their spread and treatment, especially in the ICUs [ 6 ]. Furthermore, multidrug resistance has significantly increased in the past two decades, including; resistance to last-resort antibiotics, such as colistin [ 7 , 8 ].…”