Although analysis of toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems can be instructive, to date, there is no information on the prevalence
and identity of TA systems based on a large panel of
Acinetobacter baumannii
clinical isolates. The aim of the
current study was to screen for functional TA systems among clinical isolates of
A. baumannii and to identify the systems’
locations. For this purpose, we screened 85
A. baumannii isolates collected from different clinical sources for
the presence of the
mazEF,
relBE and
higBA TA genes. The results revealed that the genes coding for the
mazEF TA
system were commonly present in all clinical isolates of
A. baumannii. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction
analysis showed that transcripts were produced in the clinical isolates. Our findings showed that TA genes are
prevalent, harboured by chromosomes and transcribed within
A. baumannii. Hence, activation of the toxin proteins in
the
mazEF TA system should be investigated further as an effective antibacterial strategy against this bacterium.
