Nucleotide Sequence Analysis of Methicillin Resistance Staphylococcus Aureus in Kurdistan Region-Iraq

Abstract

In this study a total of 241 clinically important specimens were collected from three hospitals in Kurdistan region; from which 64 isolates of S. aureus were isolated representing 26.5% of the total samples. The molecular confirmation of S. aureus isolates were done by PCR using nuc primer as a species-specific primer producing 280bp DNA fragment for nuc gene. 31 of these isolates were resistance to methicillin representing 48.4% of total isolates. Resistance to Methicillin was confirmed by using mecA primer producing 310bp DNA fragment for mecA gene. Three isolates (SaDu5, SaEr17 and SaSul24) were subjected to partial DNA sequencing of the mecA gene to assess the relation of Kurdistan isolates with other global sequences from GenBank. Sequence analysis showed that the sequence identity of all three mecA genes among the Kurdistan isolates was ranged between 97.5-98.5%, whereas the sequence identity among the Kurdistan isolates and other global isolates selected from GenBank was ranged between 92.6-96.1%. The sequenced product of S. aureus mecA genes from Kurdistan found similarities and showed partial homology with S. aureus strains (UK/NTCC124, Turkey/HM5, South Korea/ YSSA11 and India/TN/CN/1/12) penicillin binding protein 2a mecA gene, partial cds, which is available in public databases. The phylogenetic tree of the aligned sequences was produced by using MEGA5 Beta version 6.1 online software, and showed a typical relatedness among Kurdistan isolates and GenBank reference strains. This study will gives insights in to the molecular diagnosis of S. aureus and to find better synthetic drugs or organic to control expression of antibiotic genes in different pathogenic organism in general and in particular MRSA strains.