The 95th Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Bacteriology

Presentation information

On-demand Presentation

[ODP30] 7. Antimicrobial agents and resistance -a. Antimicrobial agents

[ODP-194] Complete sequences of bacteriocin plasmids of S. epidermidis and their antibacterial activity

Miki Kawada-Matsuo1,2, Mi Nguyen-Tra Le1,2, Junzo Hisatsune2,3, Motoyuki Sugai2,3, Hitoshi Komatsuzawa1,2 (1Dept. Bacteriol., Grad. Biomed., Hiroshima Univ., 2Proj. Res. Cent. for Nosoc. Infect. Dis., Hiroshima Univ., 3Antimicrob. Resist. Res. Cent., Nat. Inst. Infect. Dis.)


Staphylococcus epidermidis is a commensal bacterium in humans. To persist in the bacterial flora, some bacteria produce antibacterial factors such as bacteriocins. In this study, we tried to isolate bacteriocin-producing S. epidermidis strains. Among 150 S. epidermidis isolates from the oral cavities of 287 volunteers, we detected two bacteriocin-producing strains, KSE56 and KSE650. Complete genome sequences of the two strains confirmed that they carried the epidermin-harbouring plasmid pEpi56 and the nukacin IVK45-like-harbouring plasmid pNuk650. The amino acid sequence of epidermin from KSE56 was identical to the previously reported sequence, but the epidermin synthesis-related genes were partially different. The prepeptide amino acid sequences of nukacin KSE650 and nukacin IVK45 showed one mismatch, but both mature peptides were entirely similar. pNuk650 was larger and had an additional seven ORFs compared to pIVK45. We then investigated the antibacterial activity of the two strains against several skin and oral bacteria and found their different activity patterns. In conclusion, we report the complete sequences of 2 plasmids coding for bacteriocins from S. epidermidis, which were partially different from those previously reported. Furthermore, this is the first report to show the complete sequence of an epidermin-carrying plasmid, pEpi56.