Genomic surveillance of Escherichia coli ST131 identifies local expansion and serial replacement of subclones
Open Access
- 20 March 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Microbiology Society in Microbial Genomics
- Vol. 6 (4), mgen000352
- https://doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000352
Abstract
Escherichia coli sequence type 131 (ST131) is a pandemic clone that is evolving rapidly with increasing levels of antimicrobial resistance. Here, we investigated an outbreak of E. coli ST131 producing extended spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) in a long-term care facility (LTCF) in Ireland by combining data from this LTCF (n=69) with other Irish (n=35) and global (n=690) ST131 genomes to reconstruct the evolutionary history and understand changes in population structure and genome architecture over time. This required a combination of short- and long-read genome sequencing, de novo assembly, read mapping, ESBL gene screening, plasmid alignment and temporal phylogenetics. We found that Clade C was the most prevalent (686 out of 794 isolates, 86 %) of the three major ST131 clades circulating worldwide (A with fimH41, B with fimH22, C with fimH30), and was associated with the presence of different ESBL alleles, diverse plasmids and transposable elements. Clade C was estimated to have emerged in c. 1985 and subsequently acquired different ESBL gene variants (bla CTX-M-14 vs bla CTX-M-15 ). An ISEcp1-mediated transposition of the bla CTX-M-15 gene further increased the diversity within Clade C. We discovered a local clonal expansion of a rare C2 lineage (C2_8) with a chromosomal insertion of bla CTX-M-15 at the mppA gene. This was acquired from an IncFIA plasmid. The C2_8 lineage clonally expanded in the Irish LTCF from 2006, displacing the existing C1 strain (C1_10), highlighting the potential for novel ESBL-producing ST131 with a distinct genetic profile to cause outbreaks strongly associated with specific healthcare environments.Keywords
Funding Information
- Wellcome Trust (110243/Z/15/Z)
- Wellcome Trust (WT098600)
- Dublin City University
- ESPRC Vaccine Hub
- Department of Health (HICF-T5-342)
This publication has 59 references indexed in Scilit:
- SPAdes: A New Genome Assembly Algorithm and Its Applications to Single-Cell SequencingJournal of Computational Biology, 2012
- NCBI Reference Sequences (RefSeq): current status, new features and genome annotation policyNucleic Acids Research, 2011
- Scaffolding pre-assembled contigs using SSPACEBioinformatics, 2010
- Escherichia coli O25b-ST131: a pandemic, multiresistant, community-associated strainJournal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 2010
- Costs of Bloodstream Infections Caused by Escherichia coli and Influence of Extended-Spectrum-β-Lactamase Production and Inadequate Initial Antibiotic TherapyAntimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 2010
- Hospital and Societal Costs of Antimicrobial‐Resistant Infections in a Chicago Teaching Hospital: Implications for Antibiotic StewardshipClinical Infectious Diseases, 2009
- Context-driven discovery of gene cassettes in mobile integrons using a computational grammarBMC Bioinformatics, 2009
- Velvet: Algorithms for de novo short read assembly using de Bruijn graphsGenome Research, 2008
- Minimus: a fast, lightweight genome assemblerBMC Bioinformatics, 2007
- Application of Phylogenetic Networks in Evolutionary StudiesMolecular Biology and Evolution, 2005