The future contribution of transposition to antimicrobial resistance

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance is commonplace in clinical bacterial isolates. Many of the resistance genes are transposon-borne and have the potential for rapid dispersal throughout the bacterial kingdom. Resistance genes are constantly subject to mutation and reassortment. Given appropriate selection pressure, the new resistance determinants can emerge rapidly to pose significant treatment problems. It seems likely that in the future bacterial resistance will continue to be a problem, both with respect to current antibiotics and to new ones and that transposon-borne resistance genes will continue to figure prominently.