Recombination events that occur in a poxtA-carrying Enterococcus faecium during the conjugation process

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report showing the integration of pFac90-154 from E. faecium Fac90 into the chromosomal DNA of recipient E. faecalis JH2-2 via homologous recombination. Besides, we showed that five new plasmid types were formed by genetic rearrangements. These recombination events resulted simultaneously in the formation of various types of mosaic plasmids with multiple resistance genes and/or conjugation characteristics, which might promote the transmission of diverse plasmids encoding resistance genes among enterococci. Thus, these data significantly expand our knowledge regarding conjugative events, establishing a dual role of conjugation in both dissemination of resistance genes and plasmid evolution.