Completely different species of bacteria can spread resistance genes to each other through plasmids – small DNA molecules where bacteria store some of their genes outside the chromosome. When two bacterial cells come into contact, they can copy plasmids to each other. This is called conjugation, and it is the most important mechanism for spreading antibiotic resistance.

Modeling of plasmid transfer is essential to uncovering the fundamentals of resistance transfer and for the development of predictive measures to limit the spread of resistance. One of the main limitations in the current understanding of plasmids is the lack of knowlegde of the conjugative DNA transfer mechanisms, which conceals the true role of plasmid transfer in nature.

In a new research it was considered,that the plasmid-borne origin-of-transfer substrates encode specific DNA structural properties that can facilitate finding these regions in large datasets and develop a DNA structure-based alignment procedure for typing the transfer substrates that outperforms sequence-based approaches.

Thousands of putative DNA transfer substrates were identified, showing that plasmid mobility can be twofold higher and span almost twofold more host species than is currently known. Over half of all putative mobile plasmids contain the means for mobilization by conjugation systems belonging to different mobility groups, which can hypothetically link previously confined host ranges across ecological habitats into a robust plasmid transfer network.

This hypothetical network is found to facilitate the transfer of antimicrobial resistance from environmental genetic reservoirs to human pathogens, which might be an important driver of the observed rapid resistance development in humans and thus an important point of focus for future prevention measures.