In one of my studies, I found that repeated exposure to silver in bacteria at a sub-lethal concentration induces efflux and beta-lactamase activity. The induction of the efflux system is understandable and the presence of efflux mediating genes in non-treated bacteria(from WGS data) supported the claim. However, no beta-lactamase genes (bla genes) were found from the whole genome sequence of the non-treated bacteria. What could be the relation between metal treatment and induction of beta-lactamase enzyme?
Dear Satwik, if you obeserve bla activity, but there is no gene coding for it, something must be wrong. Either there is a new kind of beta lactamase or something is disturbing your assay.
First of all, I'd check if there is no contamination with plasmids that have a beta lactamase gene, then I'd check if silver ions might induce a positive result in the assay.
I'm not sure if the answer here is nanotechnology. At least it does this same effect in sub-lethal levels. I'mnot sure if Pt has the same effect
Hi Satwik Majumder . What beta-lactamase assay are you using?
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