Escherichia coli isolated from aquatic sediments of three urban lakes in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Whole genome sequencing (WGS) was performed on a subset of antimicrobial-resistant Escherichia coli strains isolated from aquatic sediments of three urban lakes in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. The objective of the project was to investigate the diversity of the E. coli populations within and among three waterbodies that reside in separate watersheds over the course of 15 months and determined rates of phenotypic resistance to a variety of common, clinically relevant, and last-line antimicrobials. We used a targeted approach to identify genetic determinants of resistance to several important classes of clinically relevant antimicrobials as well as whole-genome sequencing of a subset of isolates (included here). WGS was performed on all cephalosporin-resistant and diarrheagenic strains in the collection. Finally, we examined the roles that environmental persistence, transmission between environments, and the transfer of MGEs may play in the AMR and virulence patterns observed and their relationships to possible sources of contamination.