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Cross-protection and cross-feeding between Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii promotes their co-existence

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posted on 2025-05-09, 02:58 authored by Lucie Semenec, Amy K. Cain, Ian T. Paulsen, Catherine DawsonCatherine Dawson, Qi Liu, Hue Dinh, Hannah Lott, Anahit Penesyan, Ram Maharjan, Francesca L. Short, Karl HassanKarl Hassan
Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae are opportunistic pathogens frequently co-isolated from polymicrobial infections. The infections where these pathogens co-exist can be more severe and recalcitrant to therapy than infections caused by either species alone, however there is a lack of knowledge on their potential synergistic interactions. In this study we characterise the genomes of A. baumannii and K. pneumoniae strains co-isolated from a single human lung infection. We examine various aspects of their interactions through transcriptomic, phenomic and phenotypic assays that form a basis for understanding their effects on antimicrobial resistance and virulence during co-infection. Using co-culturing and analyses of secreted metabolites, we discover the ability of K. pneumoniae to cross-feed A. baumannii by-products of sugar fermentation. Minimum inhibitory concentration testing of mono- and co-cultures reveals the ability for A. baumannii to cross-protect K. pneumoniae against the cephalosporin, cefotaxime. Our study demonstrates distinct syntrophic interactions occur between A. baumannii and K. pneumoniae, helping to elucidate the basis for their co-existence in polymicrobial infections.

Funding

ARC

FT180100123

History

Journal title

Nature Communications

Volume

14

Article number

702

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

College of Engineering, Science and Environment

School

School of Environmental and Life Sciences

Rights statement

© The Author(s) 2023 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.