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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1521202
Genomic characterization of multidrug-resistant Escherichia albertii of Fish origin - first isolation and insights into a potential food safety threat
Provisionally accepted
Srinivas Kandhan 1
Sandeep Ghatak 2*
A ARUN PRINCE MILTON 2*
Samir Das 2*
Kekunguu Puro 2
DANIEL PYNGROPE 2
Angappan Madesh 1 Mosuri Chendu 2* Dadimi Bhargavi 1* Nur Abdul Kader 2* Vanita Lyngdoh 2* Heiborkie Shilla 2* John Pynhun Lamare 2*- 1 Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India
- 2 Other
Introduction: Escherichia albertii is an emerging food-borne pathogen with zoonotic potential which is often under-reported due to misidentifications.Materials and methods: The current study identified E. albertii from retail fish sold in market which was confirmed by phenotypic (colourless colonies on Xylose-Rhamnose-MacConkey Agar), genotypic (dual target uniplex PCR-based detection) and genomic methods (CheckM analysis). In this paper we report the phenotypic characters of the isolate and genomic features such as resistome, virulome and mobilome followed by in silico O and H antigen based typing and comparative phylogenomics using various tools (RAST, RGI v6.0.0, ABRicate v1.0.1, PathogenFinder v1.1, PlasmidFinder v2.0, BacAnt v3.3.1, Phigaro v2.4.0, MAFFT v7.490, FigTree v1.4.4).Results and Discussion: Multi-drug resistance was identified with reduced susceptibility to gentamicin, azithromycin, ceftazidime and cefotaxime with a Multiple Antibiotic Resistance (MAR) index of 0.33. Clinically important virulence genes such as eae, cdt, east1 formed a part of the virulome and the probability of being pathogenic to humans was found to be 0.883. The genome was found to harbour mobile genetic elements such as plasmids (IncFIA, IncFIB(pB171), IncFII(pSE11)), transposons (Tn3411, Tn6292) and prophages (Siphoviridae, Myoviridae, Podoviridae). Various typing methods such as biotyping, multilocus sequence typing and in silico O and H antigen typing classified the isolate into biotype 3, multi locus sequence type 4596, Ogenotype 4 and H-genotype 1. Phylogenomically, the isolate was placed close to isolate from neighbouring country of China. Identification of virulent multi-drug-resistant E. albertii from new food source such as fishes increases the risk for fish eating population and necessitates the requirement of further elucidation and development of appropriate control strategies.
Keywords: Escherichia albertii, fish, First report, MDR, Virulence, Genomics
Received: 01 Nov 2024; Accepted: 11 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kandhan, Ghatak, MILTON, Das, Puro, PYNGROPE, Madesh, Chendu, Bhargavi, Kader, Lyngdoh, Shilla and Lamare. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dadimi Bhargavi, Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Bareilly, 243122, Uttar Pradesh, India
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