Population genomics and antimicrobial resistance dynamics of Escherichia coli in wastewater and river environments
Creators
- 1. Antimicrobial Resistance Unit (ARU), Animal Health Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and VISAVET Health Surveillance Centre, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- 2. Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance (CGPS), Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK.
- 3. Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics, Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Present address: UTA RAM One Health, Faculty of Food Science, Engineering and Biotechnology, Technical University of Ambato, Ambato, Ecuador
- 4. Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology (IBBTEC), CSIC, University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain.
- 5. Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics, Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Description
Aquatic environments are key niches for the emergence, evolution and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. However, the population diversity and the genetic elements that drive the dynamics of resistant bacteria in different aquatic environments are still largely unknown. The aim of this study was to understand the population genomics and evolutionary events of Escherichia coli resistant to clinically important antibiotics including aminoglycosides, in anthropogenic and natural water ecosystems. Here we show that less different E. coli sequence types (STs) are identified in wastewater than in rivers, albeit more resistant to antibiotics, and with significantly more plasmids/cell (6.36 vs 3.72). However, the genomic diversity within E. coli STs in both aquatic environments is similar. Wastewater environments favor the selection of conserved chromosomal structures associated with diverse flexible plasmids, unraveling promiscuous interplasmidic resistance genes flux. On the contrary, the key driver for river E. coli adaptation is a mutable chromosome along with few plasmid types shared between diverse STs harboring a limited resistance gene content.
Files
s42003-021-01949-x(4).pdf
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(5.4 MB)
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