Emergence of bla NDM-1-carrying Enterobacter chengduensis in China

Hongyu Fu; Zhichen Zhu; Xiao Wang; Jingnan Lv; Jie Zhu; Liang Chen; Hua Yu; Hong Du

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1404996

Emergence of bla _NDM-1-carrying Enterobacter chengduensis in China

Front Microbiol. 2024 Aug 14:15:1404996. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1404996. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Hongyu Fu^#^{1

2}, Zhichen Zhu^#¹, Xiao Wang^#³, Jingnan Lv¹, Jie Zhu¹, Liang Chen⁴, Hua Yu³, Hong Du^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.
² Department of Blood Transfusion, The Children's Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.
³ Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory for Human Disease Gene Study, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
⁴ Department of Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, United States.
⁵ MOE Key Laboratory of Geriatric Diseases and Immunology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: Enterobacter chengduensis was defined as a novel species in the genus. Enterobacter in 2019, however, antimicrobial resistance, such as carbapenem resistance, has rarely been described in E. chengduensis. This study described the molecular features of four carbapenem-resistant E. chengduensis strains collected from a tertiary health care hospital in Southwest China.

Methods: Whole genome sequencing (WGS) was used to determine the genome sequence of four E. chengduensis strains. The precise species of strains were identified by average nucleotide identity (ANI) and in silico DNA-DNA hybridization (isDDH). The clonal relatedness of four E. chengduensis strains and additional 15 ones from NCBI were examined through phylogenetic analysis. The molecular features of E. chengduensis and genetic structure of carbapenemase- encoding plasmids were characterized through genomic annotation and analysis.

Results: The results revealed the emergence of bla _NDM-1-carrying E. chengduensis strains in China. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis showed that all 19 E. chengduensis belonged to the same sequence type of ST414. Core SNP analysis suggested the potential intrahospital clonal transmission of ST414 E. chengduensis. The carbapenemase-encoding gene bla _NDM-1 was harbored by an IncC-type plasmid, which was experimentally confirmed to be able to conjugate.

Discussion: This study reports the first emergence and potential clonal transmission of bla _NDM-1-carrying E. chengduensis. Further surveillance should be advocated to monitor the dissemination of carbapenem-resistant E. chengduensis and bla _NDM-1-harboring IncC-type plasmids in China.

Keywords: Enterobacter chengduensis; IncC; ST414; blaNDM–1; carbapenemase.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of the article. This study was supported by the Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province Health Department (ZDB2020014); the Science Foundation of Suzhou Health Department (LCZX202106); the Science and Technology Program of Suzhou (SLJ2022003, 2022SS41); the Discipline Construction Program of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University (XKTJ-TD202001) and the Natural Science Fund of China (82002204).