Genome Sequence of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius Sequence Type 233 (ST233) Strain K7, of Human Origin.

We report the genome sequence of the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius strain K7, isolated from the nares of a veterinarian in Seoul, South Korea.

GENOME ANNOUNCEMENT

Staphylococcus pseudintermedius is a commensal in dogs and an important opportunistic pathogen commonly associated with skin and ear infections. S. pseudintermedius is not part of the normal human microflora, and occurrence in humans is limited mainly to individuals who have regular contact with pets, such as pet owners and veterinarians. Methicillin-resistant S. pseudintermedius (MRSP) is a serious veterinary problem due to its characteristic multidrug-resistance phenotype (1), and it can be transmitted to owners and veterinarians (2, 3). A human MRSP infection has been reported as the result of exposure to a colonized dog (4).

MRSP strain K7, belonging to spa type t06 and sequence type 233 (ST233), was isolated from the nares of a healthy female veterinarian at a small animal veterinary teaching hospital in Seoul, South Korea, in April 2008 (1). This strain was determined to harbor the antimicrobial resistance genes ant(6′)-Ia-aph(3′)-III (aminoglycoside resistance), mecA and blaZ (β-lactam resistance), erm(B) (resistance to macrolides, lincosamides, and group B streptogramins), lnu(A) (lincosamide resistance), tet(M) (tetracycline resistance), and dfrG (trimethoprim resistance), and the exfoliative toxin gene set.

The genome of K7 was determined using 454 pyrosequencing on a GS Junior genome sequencer at 454 Life Sciences (Roche Diagnostics, Basel, Switzerland), generating 101,942 reads with an average length of 437 bp. De novo genome assembly using Geneious v6.1.3 produced 77 contigs of >1,000 bp, with a mean length of 37,767 bp. Automated annotation of genes was performed on the Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology (RAST) server (5).

The draft genome of K7 is estimated to be 2,763,498 bp and has a G+C content of 37.4%. K7 has a slightly lower G+C content (0.2 to 0.8%) than the other sequenced S. pseudintermedius strains, MRSP strain E140 (accession no. ANOI01000001) and the two methicillin-susceptible S. pseudintermedius strains HKU 10-03 (accession no. CP002439) and ED99 (accession no. CP002478). The K7 genome is 6 kb smaller than that of MRSP E140 but is 146 and 191 kb larger than those of HKU 10-03 and ED99, respectively. Methicillin resistance is associated with the presence of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec element (SCCmec) type V (28 kb). K7 is predicted to have 2,937 protein-coding sequences and 85 tRNAs.

This K7 MRSP genome of human origin will facilitate future comparative genomic analyses of S. pseudintermedius strains from different countries, as well as aid in the identification of factors related to host range.

Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.

The K7 genome has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession no. BARM01000001 to BARM01000077.