Characterisation of PVL-positive Staphylococcus argenteus from the United Arab Emirates

Staphylococcus argenteus is a recently described staphylococcal species that is related to Staphylococcus aureus but that lacks the staphyloxanthin operon. It is able to acquire both, resistance markers such as the SCCmec elements and mobile genetic elements carrying virulence-associated genes from S. aureus. This includes those encoding the Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), which is associated mainly with severe and/or recurrent staphylococcal skin and soft tissue infections. Here, we describe the genome sequences of two PVL-positive, mecA-negative S. argenteus sequence type (ST) 2250 isolates from the United Arab Emirates in detail. Isolates were found during a study on environmental contamination in a dental clinic in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Both were sequenced using Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT). This demonstrated the presence of temperate bacteriophages in the staphylococcal genomes including a PVL prophage. It was es-sentially identical to the published sequence of phiSa2wa_st78 (GenBank NC_055048), a PVL phage from an Australian S. aureus clonal complex (CC) 88 isolate. Beside the PVL prophage, one isolate carried another prophage and the second isolate carried two additional prophages, whereby the region between these two prophages was inverted. This flipped region comprised about 1,083,000 bp, or more than a third of the strains genome, and it included the PVL pro-phage