Another reason to wear a wide-brimmed hat to the beach

Attacking seagulls Dewey Beach, Delaware 2007

These days, with everyone worried about skin cancer, one shouldn't go to the beach without plenty of sun screen and one of those wide-brimmed floppy hats that protects your cabeza. Now you have another reason to look totally awesome at the beach - VRE protection.  That's right.  Researchers collected 57 faecal samples of Seagulls (Larus cachinnans) of Berlengas Natural Reserve in Portugal.  Using a combined proteomic and genomic approach they found that 95% of the gulls had detectable Enterococcus isolates with 50% being E. faecium and 10% E. faecalis with the remainder being other species. Around 10% had vanA containing VRE (Four E. faecium and two E. durans). Other resistance genes were detected including tet(M) and erm(B).

Of course finding VRE in other species isn't the true discovery here as the authors state they've identified proteins involved in both antibiotic resistance and the stress response in vanA-containing enterococci. They also suggest that their results may reflect the expression of a few membrane proteins involved in resistance which could be targets for the development of novel antibiotics.  I can't comment much on that, but I am going to wear my large-brimmed hat to the beach.

Radhouani et al. Proteome Science 2010.