Horizontal spread of mer operons among gram-positive bacteria in natural environments

Horizontal dissemination of the genes responsible for resistance to toxic pollutants may play a key role in the adaptation of bacterial populations to environmental contaminants. However, the frequency and extent of gene dissemination in natural environments is not known. A natural horizontal spread of two distinct mercury resistance (mer) operon variants, which occurred amongst diverse Bacillus and related species over wide geographical areas, is reported. One mer variant encodes a mercuric reductase with a single N-terminal domain, whilst the other encodes a reductase with a duplicated N-terminal domain. The strains containing the former mer operon types are sensitive to organomercurials, and are most common in the terrestrial mercury-resistant Bacillus populations studied in this work. The strains containing the latter operon types are resistant to organomercurials, and dominate in a Minamata Bay mercury-resistant Bacillus population, previously described in the literature. At least three distinct transposons (related to a class II vancomycin-resistance transposon, Tn1546, from a clinical Enterococcus strain) and conjugative plasmids are implicated as mediators of the spread of these mer operons.