Neither the present study nor any other research activity at Lund University has been funded by ConCellae AB. Therefore, the authors declare no competing interests concerning this work. Authors’ contributions EB was responsible for performing experiments, interpreting MASCOT and genomic data, identifying proteins, designing figures, and writing the majority of the manuscript. MA was involved with genome analysis, protein annotation, putative operon prediction, MASCOT interpretation, figure design, and writing of manuscript. TCO was involved in the design of project, the collection of honeybee colonies from North

Sweden, the isolation of LAB spp. from honeybees, and the initiation of the LAB genome sequencing, and also contributed to the writing of the manuscript. CK and JM were involved in designing the project, MASCOT data interpretation, and Mass spectrometry. AV initiated the project, designed

the experimental trials, and developed the methods this website used in the study in collaboration with TO and JM. She supervised the project and took part in writing check details the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Acinetobacter baumannii is one of the common bacterial species responsible for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) [1]. The prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) A. baumannii in hospitals has been increasing worldwide [2], representing a serious challenge for clinical management and public health. Investigation on the clonal relatedness new of A. baumannii in local settings could generate useful data to understand

the local epidemiology of this opportunistic pathogen and therefore lay a foundation for an effective infection control program. Previous studies have focused on the clonal relatedness of A. baumannii but the vast majority of these studies were retrospective and used a collection of isolates either from outbreaks or with little information on their representativeness. For hospitals in Sichuan, Southwest China, A. baumannii was a huge problem as it was the most common bacterial species associated with HAIs and accounted for 17.3% of putative pathogens causing HAIs in a point prevalence survey [3]. Outbreaks due to A. baumannii had also been reported in our hospitals [4]. A snapshot study was therefore performed to investigate the clonal relatedness of A. baumannii clinical isolates in our local settings. Results and discussion Among 82 non-repetitive isolates that were recovered from clinical specimens from June 22 to June 25, 2011 in 13 hospitals in Sichuan and were putatively identified as A. baumannii by automated microbiology systems, 67 isolates were validated to be A. baumannii. The vast majority (61/67, 91%) of the A. baumannii isolates were recovered from sputa or respiratory tract secretions. The remaining six isolates were from ascites, cerebrospinal fluid, drainage, pleural fluid or wound secretions. As for the clinical significance, A.