Summer Buzz

Polyxeni Potter

Author affiliation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Etymologia: Verona Integron

Verona Integron
From the Latin integrare (to make whole), integrons are systems for capturing and spreading antibiotic resistance genes among gram-negative bacteria. Integrons were first described by Stokes and Hall in 1989, although they clearly contributed to the first outbreaks of multidrug resistance in the 1950s. The Verona integron was first described in carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from a patient hospitalized at Verona University Hospital, Verona, Italy. Integrons are ancient structures that have been present in bacteria for millions of years, indicating that bacteria had the means of acquiring and disseminating antibiotic resistance long before humans developed antibiotics.

References

Lauretti L, Riccio ML, Mazzariol A, Cornaglia G, Amicosante G, Fontana R, Cloning and characterization of bla_VIM, a new integron-borne metallo-β-lactamase gene from a Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 1999;43:1584–90 .PubMed
Mazel D. Integrons: agents of bacterial evolution. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2006;4:608–20 . DOI PubMed
Stokes HW, Hall RM. A novel family of potentially mobile DNA elements encoding site-specific gene-integration functions: integrons. Mol Microbiol. 1989;3:1669–83 . DOI PubMed

Suggested citation for this article: Etymologia: Verona integron. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2013 Jul [date cited]. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1907.ET1907