Key genetic clue missing in fight against superbugs

For the first time, researchers have discovered how antibiotic resistance genes are spreading, at a continental scale, via bacterial plasmids in the hospital superbug, Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Researchers from the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance, based jointly at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, together with their collaborators used genome sequencing technology to analyse plasmids – genetic structures in bacteria that can carry antibiotic resistance genes – as well as bacterial chromosomes from K. pneumoniae samples taken from European hospital patients.