Resistance

-m resistance

The resistance module detects acquired antimicrobial resistance genes and chromosomal point mutations associated with reduced antimicrobial susceptibility in Staphylococcus aureus.

It screens for resistance determinants across multiple antibiotic classes, including:

  • Aminoglycosides
  • Beta-lactams
  • Fluoroquinolones
  • Oxazolinidones
  • MLSB
  • Rifampicin
  • Tetracyclines
  • Glycopeptides

A curated set of FASTA files containing representative resistance gene sequences are bundled with the module and stored in the /data directory.

All detected genes are annotated as follows:

  • No annotation**: exact nucleotide match
  • ^: inexact nucleotide match but perfect amino acid match
  • *: inexact nucleotide and inexact amino acid match
  • ?: incomplete match
  • -X%: truncated amino acid sequence

The module screens specific chromosomal loci for point mutations known to confer resistance.

Locus Mutation targets Associated phenotype
gyrA S84L, E88K, E88G Fluoroquinolones-R
gyrB T451S Fluoroquinolones-R
parC S80F, S80Y, E84K, E84G, E84V Fluoroquinolones-R
rpoB H481Y, H481N, L466N, A473T, A477T Rifampicin-R
23S rRNA G2576T, G2447T, T2500A Linezolid-R

Parameters

Hits are filtered using minimum alignment identity and coverage thresholds:

  • --min_id_res
    Minimum alignment percentage identity (default: 90)

  • --min_cov_res
    Minimum alignment percentage coverage (default: 80)

All hits with 80–90% identity or 40–80% coverage are reported as spurious hits.

Resistance Score

A resistance score is calculated to categorize isolates based on a hierarchy of clinical resistance.

Scoring criteria:

  • 3: vanA or vanB detected (Vancomycin resistance)
  • 2: mecA or mecC detected (Methicillin resistance – MRSA)
  • 1: blaZ detected (Penicillin/Beta-lactamase resistance)
  • 0: No key resistance drivers detected

Output

Results are grouped by antibiotic class and reported individually.

Field Description
res_score Resistance score (0–3)
res_gene_count Number of genes conferring resistance
res_class_count Number of classes with at least one resistance determinants
Amino_res Detected aminoglycoside resistance genes
Bla_res Detected beta-lactamase genes
Flq_res Genes/mutations conferring fluoroquinolone resistance
Gly_res Detected glycopeptide resistance genes
Mec_res Detected methicillin resistance genes
MLSB_res Detected macrolide/streptogramin B/lincosamide resistance genes
Oxa_res Genes/mutations conferring oxazolinidones resistance
Rif_res Genes/mutations conferring rifampicin resistance
Tet_res Detected tetracycline resistance genes (tet family)
spurious_resistance_hits Genes with weak hits
truncated_resistance_hits Genes with truncations

For res_gene_count and res_class_count the following criteria is used:

  • The presence of resistance mutations do not contribute to the resistance gene count

  • Mutations do contribute to the drug class count

  • Genes reported in the truncated_resistance_hits and spurious_resistance_hits columns do not contribute to the counts

List of genes

Gene Drug Class Variants^ Reference number^^ Citation
AAC(6')-Ie-APH(2'')-Ia aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3002597 Daigle DM, et al. 1999
ANT(4')-Ia aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3002623 Santanam P and Kayser FH. 1978
ANT(4')-Ib aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3003905 McDougal LK, et al. 2010
APH(3')-IIIa aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3002647 Trieu-Cuot P and Courvalin P. 1983
ANT(6)-Ia aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3002626 Gill SR, et al. 200
ANT(9)-Ia aminoglycoside antibiotic 1 3002630 Murphy et al. 1985
mecA penicillin beta-lactam 291 3000617 Ubukata K, et al. 1989
mecC penicillin beta-lactam 6 3001209 Garcia-Alvarez L, et al. 2011
blaZ penicillin beta-lactam 473 3000621 McLaughlin JR, et al. 1981
blaZ mecC-type penicillin beta-lactam 5 3005097 Shore AC, et al. 2011
cfrA phenicol antibiotic 1 3003441 Schwarz S, et al. 2000
poxtA oxazolinidone antibiotic 1 3004470 Antonelli A, et al. 2018
ermA streptogramin antibiotic, streptogramin B antibiotic, streptogramin A antibiotic, lincosamide antibiotic, macrolide antibiotic 1 3000347 Malhotra-Kumar S, et al. 2008
ermB streptogramin antibiotic, streptogramin B antibiotic, streptogramin A antibiotic, lincosamide antibiotic, macrolide antibiotic 1 3000375 Yu L, et al. 1997
ermC streptogramin antibiotic, streptogramin B antibiotic, streptogramin A antibiotic, lincosamide antibiotic, macrolide antibiotic 1 3000250 Shivakumar AG and Dubnau D. 1981
ermT streptogramin antibiotic, streptogramin B antibiotic, streptogramin A antibiotic, lincosamide antibiotic, macrolide antibiotic 1 3000595 Tannock GW, et al. 1994
msrA streptogramin antibiotic, streptogramin B antibiotic, macrolide antibiotic 1 3000251 Poole K. 2005
tetM tetracycline antibiotic 3 3000186; SAV0398; M21136.1 Akhtar M, et al. 2009
tetK tetracycline antibiotic 1 3000178 Roberts MC. 2005
vanA glycopeptide antibiotic 1 3000010 Marshall CG, et al. 1997
vanB glycopeptide antibiotic 1 3000013 Marshall CG, et al. 1997

Note:

^ : Number of variants in the database;

^^: Reference sequence of each variant. If multiple variants are present, but only one reference is reported, it means that all variants have the same reference from the same database.