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Replicating methicillin resistance?

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 23, pages 874–875 (2016)Cite this article

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Methicillin resistance in the clinically important bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has evolved in multiple S. aureus lineages through acquisition of chromosomally integrating mobile genetic elements named SCCmec. Now Rice and colleagues show that the conserved SCCmec cch gene encodes an active DNA helicase, thus suggesting that extrachromosomal replication is part of the enigmatic SCCmec horizontal-transfer mechanism.

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Figure 1: Conserved genetic organization of SCCmec.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joshua P. Ramsay is at the School of Biomedical Sciences and the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.,

    Joshua P Ramsay

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  1. Joshua P Ramsay
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Correspondence to Joshua P Ramsay.

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Ramsay, J. Replicating methicillin resistance?. Nat Struct Mol Biol 23, 874–875 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.3303

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