Abundance-weighted analysis and deep functional metagenomic selection reveals unrecognized diversity of soil-derived streptothricin acetyltransferases

Deep functional metagenomic selection of ~700 Gigabases of soil DNA uncovered 265 acetyltransferase-like candidates, and 10 of 18 tested conferred significant nourseothricin resistance in Escherichia coli.

• Why it matters: The environmental diversity of streptothricin resistance genes is poorly defined, limiting understanding of the STC resistome beyond a few known acetyltransferases.
• What they did: A resistance-selected metagenomic library was built from soil DNA and screened against nourseothricin, yielding nearly 30,000 resistant clones; abundance-weighted analysis prioritized 265 acetyltransferase-like candidates, and 18 were re-cloned and tested in Escherichia coli.
• The result: Re-cloning confirmed 10 candidates with significant NTC resistance and identified three uncharacterized lineages, SatC, SatD, and SatE, with maximum amino-acid identities of ~31% (SatC/SatD) and up to 47.5% (SatE), while SatC also decreased susceptibility to amikacin and kanamycin.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.