Journal article
Parallel loss of type VI secretion systems in two multi-drug-resistant Escherichia coli lineages
- Abstract:
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The repeated emergence of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) Escherichia coli clones is a threat to public health globally. In recent work, drug-resistant E. coli were shown to be capable of displacing commensal E. coli in the human gut. Given the rapid colonization observed in travel studies, it is possible that the presence of a type VI secretion system (T6SS) may be responsible for the rapid competitive advantage of drug-resistant E. coli clones. We employed large-scale genomic approaches to investigate this hypothesis. First, we searched for T6SS genes across a curated dataset of over 20 000 genomes representing the full phylogenetic diversity of E. coli. This revealed large, non-phylogenetic variation in the presence of T6SS genes. No association was found between T6SS gene carriage and MDR lineages. However, multiple clades containing MDR clones have lost essential structural T6SS genes. We characterized the T6SS loci of ST410 and ST131 and identified specific recombination and insertion events responsible for the parallel loss of essential T6SS genes in two MDR clones.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1099/mgen.0.001133
Authors
- Publisher:
- Microbiology Society
- Journal:
- Microbial Genomics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 11
- Article number:
- 001133
- Publication date:
- 2023-11-16
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-10-31
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2057-5858
- Pmid:
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37970873
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1577649
- Local pid:
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pubs:1577649
- Deposit date:
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2025-04-30
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Cummins et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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