Isolation and characterization of NDM-positive Escherichia coli from municipal wastewater in Saudi Arabia

The emergence of resistance to last resort antibiotics is a public health concern of global scale. Besides direct person-to-person propagation, environmental pathways might contribute to the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Here we described the incidence over a one-year period of blaNDM-1 in the wastewater of Jeddah city, a gene conferring resistance to carbapenem, an antibiotic typically used as a last line of defense against gram-negative bacterial infections. To track the bacteria carrying blaNDM-1, we isolated from the wastewater and sequenced the genome of Escherichia coli PI7, a strain of serotype ST101. The bacteria isolate has genome that encodes for an extensive repertoire of ARGs and exhibits potential virulence traits. Genome sequencing revealed a possible clinical origin of the strain, and a subset of traits that might favor the survival of this strain in the host and the environment. The environmental occurrence of this strain, coupled with the pathogenic, antimicrobial resistance and possible environmental persistence traits of this isolate, place this bacterium as a good model for future environmental fate and persistence studies of enteric pathogens and it’s associated ARGs.