Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

High-level polymyxin B resistance and underlying mechanism in a multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter strain isolated from the marine plastisphere

The Journal of Antibiotics volume 79, pages 122–132 (2026)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance of Acinetobacter poses a serious threat to public health. Still, the antibiotic resistance features of marine Acinetobacter remain largely unexplored. Here, an Acinetobacter beijerinkii strain, named as MPE71, was isolated from the marine plastisphere. Phylogenetic analysis revealed close relationship of MPE71 with two human pathogenic strains of Acinetobacter. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assays of 10 antibiotics demonstrated the multidrug-resistance of MPE71. Notably, it showed a MIC of 200 µg/mL against polymyxin B. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating that Acinetobacter from the marine plastisphere exhibits multidrug resistance, including high-level resistance to polymyxin B. Genomic resistance gene analysis revealed numerous multidrug efflux pump genes encoded in MPE71. The resistance mechanism was further studied using transcriptomics. Enhanced membrane biosynthesis, multidrug efflux pumps, and periplasmic protein factors largely explained the resistance of MPE71 to polymyxin B, with up-regulation of relevant genes in a dose-dependent manner. Subsequently, inhibition of the proton motive force (PMF) by carbonyl cyanide 3-chlorophenylhydrazone diminished MPE71 resistance to polymyxin B, underscoring the key role of PMF-dependent efflux pumps. This study provides new evidence for the ecological risk of antibiotic resistance in the marine plastisphere.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

New sequencing data was used in this article. The genome of Acinetobacter beijerinckii MPE71 was uploaded to China National Center for Bioinformation under accession number CRA017497 (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa/browse/CRA017497). The meta-transcriptomic data obtained in this study were uploaded to NCBI under the accession number PRJNA1156358 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA1156358).

References

  1. Yelin I, Kishony R. Antibiotic resistance. Cell. 2018;172:1136–1136.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Wong D, Nielsen TB, Bonomo RA, Pantapalangkoor P, Luna B, Spellberg B. Clinical and Pathophysiological Overview of Acinetobacter Infections: a Century of Challenges. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2017;30:409–47.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Adewoyin MA, Okoh AI. The natural environment as a reservoir of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Acinetobacter species. Rev Environ Health. 2018;33:265–72.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Nang SC, Azad MAK, Velkov T, Zhou QT, Li J. Rescuing the Last-Line Polymyxins: Achievements and Challenges. Pharmacol Rev. 2021;73:679–728.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Auta HS, Emenike CU, Fauziah SH. Distribution and importance of microplastics in the marine environment: A review of the sources, fate, effects, and potential solutions. Environ Int. 2017;102:165–76.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Qin P, Cui H, Li P, Wang S, Fan S, Lu J, et al. Early stage of biofilm assembly on microplastics is structured by substrate size and bacterial motility. Imeta. 2023;2:121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Kaur K, Reddy S, Barathe P, Oak U, Shriram V, Kharat SS, et al. Microplastic-associated pathogens and antimicrobial resistance in environment. Chemosphere. 2022;291:133005.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Zadjelovic V, Wright RJ, Borsetto C, Quartey J, Cairns TN, Langille M, et al. Microbial hitchhikers harbouring antimicrobial-resistance genes in the riverine plastisphere. Microbiome. 2023;11:225.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Yang Y, Liu G, Song W, Ye C, Lin H, Li Z, et al. Plastics in the marine environment are reservoirs for antibiotic and metal resistance genes. Environ Int. 2019;123:79–86.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Bankevich A, Nurk S, Antipov D, Gurevich AA, Dvorkin M, Kulikov AS, et al. SPAdes: a new genome assembly algorithm and its applications to single-cell sequencing. J Comput Biol. 2012;19:455–77.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Hyatt D, Chen GL, Locascio PF, Land ML, Larimer FW, Hauser LJ. Prodigal: prokaryotic gene recognition and translation initiation site identification. BMC Bioinformatics. 2010;11:119.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  12. Kanehisa M, Furumichi M, Tanabe M, Sato Y, Morishima K. KEGG: new perspectives on genomes, pathways, diseases and drugs. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017;45:D353–D361.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Persson E, Sonnhammer ELL. InParanoid-DIAMOND: faster orthology analysis with the InParanoid algorithm. Bioinformatics. 2022;38:2918–9.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. Chaumeil PA, Mussig AJ, Hugenholtz P, Parks DH. GTDB-Tk: a toolkit to classify genomes with the Genome Taxonomy Database. Bioinformatics. 2019;36:1925–7.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  15. Chklovski A, Parks DH, Woodcroft BJ, Tyson GW. CheckM2: a rapid, scalable and accurate tool for assessing microbial genome quality using machine learning. Nat Methods. 2024;21:735.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Alcock BP, Huynh W, Chalil R, Smith KW, Raphenya AR, Wlodarski MA, et al. CARD 2023: expanded curation, support for machine learning, and resistome prediction at the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database. Nucleic Acids Res. 2023;51:D690–D699.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Tamura K, Stecher G, Peterson D, Filipski A, Kumar S. MEGA6: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 6.0. Mol Biol Evol. 2013;30:2725–9.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. CLSI. Performance standards for antimicrobial susceptibility testing, M100, 31st ed. Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, Wayne, PA. 2023.

  19. Ding W, Wang S, Qin P, Fan S, Su X, Cai P, et al. Anaerobic thiosulfate oxidation by the Roseobacter group is prevalent in marine biofilms. Nat Commun. 2023;14:2033.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  20. Zhang H, Zhang J, Fan S, Lu J, Zhang W, Ding W. Synthetic biofilm community for efficient phosphorus removal from high-salinity wastewater. Bioresour Technol. 2024;29:131902.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Patel RK, Jain M. NGS QC Toolkit: a toolkit for quality control of next generation sequencing data. PLoS ONE. 2012;7:e30619.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  22. Langmead B, Salzberg SL. Fast gapped-read alignment with Bowtie 2. Nat Methods. 2012;9:357–9.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  23. Li H, Handsaker B, Wysoker A, Fennell T, Ruan J, Homer N, et al. The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools. Bioinformatics. 2009;25:2078–9.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  24. Nemec A, Musílek M, Maixnerová M, De Baere T, van der Reijden TJ, Vaneechoutte M, et al. Acinetobacter beijerinckii sp. nov. and Acinetobacter gyllenbergii sp. nov., haemolytic organisms isolated from humans. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2009;59:118–24.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  25. Khatri I, Singh NK, Subramanian S, Mayilraj S. Genome sequencing and annotation of Acinetobacter haemolyticus strain MTCC 9819(T). Genom Data. 2013;2:10–12.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  26. Zückert WR. Secretion of bacterial lipoproteins: through the cytoplasmic membrane, the periplasm and beyond. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2014;1843:1509–16.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  27. Hazel AJ, Abdali N, Leus IV, Parks JM, Smith JC, Zgurskaya HI, et al. Conformational Dynamics of AcrA Govern Multidrug Efflux Pump Assembly. ACS Infect Dis. 2019;5:1926–35.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  28. Thede GL, Arthur DC, Edwards RA, Buelow DR, Wong JL, Raivio TL, et al. Structure of the periplasmic stress response protein CpxP. J Bacteriol. 2011;193:2149–57.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  29. Sanchez-Carbonel A, Mondragón B, López-Chegne N, Peña-Tuesta I, Huayan-Dávila G, Blitchtein D, et al. The effect of the efflux pump inhibitor Carbonyl Cyanide m-Chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP) on the susceptibility to imipenem and cefepime in clinical strains of Acinetobacter baumannii. PLoS ONE. 2021;16:e0259915.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  30. Radisic V, Nimje PS, Bienfait AM, Marathe NP. Marine Plastics from Norwegian West Coast Carry Potentially Virulent Fish Pathogens and Opportunistic Human Pathogens Harboring New Variants of Antibiotic Resistance Genes. Microorganisms. 2020;8:1200.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  31. García-Quintanilla M, Carretero-Ledesma M, Moreno-Martínez P, Martín-Peña R, Pachón J, McConnell MJ. Lipopolysaccharide loss produces partial colistin dependence and collateral sensitivity to azithromycin, rifampicin and vancomycin in Acinetobacter baumannii. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2015;46:696–702.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Moffatt JH, Harper M, Boyce JD. Mechanisms of Polymyxin Resistance. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2019;1145:55–71.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Kyriakidis I, Vasileiou E, Pana ZD, Tragiannidis A. Acinetobacter baumannii Antibiotic Resistance Mechanisms. Pathogens. 2021;10:373.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  34. Coyne S, Courvalin P, Périchon B. Efflux-mediated antibiotic resistance in Acinetobacter spp. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2011;5:947–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Zack KM, Sorenson T, Joshi SG. Types and Mechanisms of Efflux Pump Systems and the Potential of Efflux Pump Inhibitors in the Restoration of Antimicrobial Susceptibility, with a Special Reference to Acinetobacter baumannii. Pathogens. 2024;13(3):197.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  36. Harmer CJ, Nigro SJ, Hall RM. Acinetobacter baumannii GC2 Sublineage Carrying the aac(6’)-Im Amikacin, Netilmicin, and Tobramycin Resistance Gene Cassette. Microbiol Spectr. 2023;11:0120423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Hospenthal MK, Costa TRD, Waksman G. A comprehensive guide to pilus biogenesis in Gram-negative bacteria. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2017;15:365–79.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  38. Alvarez-Fraga L, Phan MD, Goh KGK, Nhu N, Hancock SJ, Allsopp LP, et al. Differential Afa/Dr Fimbriae Expression in the Multidrug-Resistant Escherichia coli ST131 Clone. mBio. 2022;13:0351921.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (4022000-842441005), and Research Funds from Shandong Province (3005000-862205033005).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Biological Sciences and Technology, Taiyuan Normal University, Jinzhong, China

    Peng Qin

  2. MOE Key Laboratory of Marine Genetics & Breeding and College of Marine Life Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Wei Ding & Weipeng Zhang

Authors
  1. Peng Qin
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wei Ding
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Weipeng Zhang
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

WZ and WD conceived the idea of the study. PQ conducted experiments and data analyses. PQ and WZ wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Weipeng Zhang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Qin, P., Ding, W. & Zhang, W. High-level polymyxin B resistance and underlying mechanism in a multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter strain isolated from the marine plastisphere. J Antibiot 79, 122–132 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-025-00888-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-025-00888-7

Search

Advanced search

Quick links