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Publication Abstract from PubMed

OXA-66 is a member of the OXA-51 subfamily of class D beta-lactamases native to the Acinetobacter genus that includes Acinetobacter baumannii, one of the ESKAPE pathogens and a major cause of drug-resistant nosocomial infections. Although both wild type OXA-66 and OXA-51 have low catalytic activity, they are ubiquitous in the Acinetobacter genomes. OXA-51 is also remarkably thermostable. In addition, newly emerging, single and double amino acid variants show increased activity against carbapenems, indicating that the OXA-51 subfamily is growing and gaining clinical significance. In this study, we used molecular dynamics simulations, X-ray crystallography, and thermal denaturation data to examine and compare the dynamics of OXA-66 wt and its gain-of-function variants: I129L (OXA-83), L167V (OXA-82), P130Q (OXA-109), P130A, and W222L (OXA-234). Our data indicate that OXA-66 wt also has a high melting temperature, and its remarkable stability is due to an extensive and rigid hydrophobic bridge formed by a number of residues around the active site and harbored by the three loops, P, Omega, and beta5-beta6. Compared to the WT enzyme, the mutants exhibit higher flexibility only in the loop regions, and are more stable than other robust carbapenemases, such as OXA-23 and OXA-24/40. All the mutants show increased rotational flexibility of residues I129 and W222, which allows carbapenems to bind. Overall, our data support the hypothesis that structural features in OXA-51 and OXA-66 promote evolution of multiple highly stable variants with increased clinical relevance in A. baumannii.

Structural and Dynamic Features of Acinetobacter baumannii OXA-66 beta-Lactamase Explain Its Stability and Evolution of Novel Variants.,Klamer ZL, June CM, Wawrzak Z, Taracila MA, Grey JA, Benn AMI, Russell CP, Bonomo RA, Powers RA, Leonard DA, Szarecka A J Mol Biol. 2024 May 8;436(12):168603. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2024.168603. PMID:38729259^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.