Project description:Background: The rapid evolution and dissemination of mobilized colistin resistance gene (mcr) family has revealed as a severe threat to the global public health. Nevertheless, dramatic reduction in the prevalence of mcr-1, the major member of mcr family, was observed after the withdrawal of colistin in animal fodder in China since 2017, demonstrating that colistin acts as a selective stress to promote the dissemination of mcr-1. As the second largest lineage, mcr-3 was firstly discovered in 2017 and has been identified from numerous sources. However, whether the spreading of mcr-3 is driven by colistin remains unknown. Methods: To this end, we investigated the global prevalence of mcr-3 from 2005 to 2022 by an up-to-date systematic review, along with a nation-wide epidemiological study to establish the change of mcr-3 prevalence in China before and after 2017. To investigate the fitness cost imposed by MCR-3 upon bacterial host, in vitro and in vivo competitive assays were employed, along with morphological study and fluorescent observation. Moreover, by replacing non-optimal codons with optimal codons, synonymous mutations were introduced into the 5’-coding region of mcr-3 to study mechanisms accounting for the distinct fitness cost conferred by MCR-1 and MCR-3. Furthermore, by combining AlphaFold and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, we provided a complete characterization on the putative lipid A binding pocket localized at the linker domain of MCR-3. Crucially, inhibitors targeting at the putative binding pocket of MCR-1 or MCR-3 were identified from small molecules library using the pipeline of virtual screening. Findings: The global prevalence of mcr-3 increased continuously from 2005 to 2022. The average prevalence was 0.18% during 2005-2014 and rapidly increased to 3.41% during 2020-2022. The prevalence of mcr-3 in China increased from 0.79% in 2016 to 5.87% in 2019. We found that the fitness of mcr-3-bearing E. coli and empty plasmid control was comparable but higher than that of mcr-1-positive strain. Although the putative lipid A binding pocket of MCR-3 was similar to that of in MCR-1, mcr-3 occupies remarkable codon bias at the 5’-end of coding region that disrupted the stability of mRNA, further reduced its protein expression in E. coli, resulting in the low fitness burden of bacterial host. Moreover, the 5’-end codon usage frequency appeared as a critical factor related with the evolution of mcr family. Furthermore, based on the similar lipid A binding pocket among MCR family protein, we identified three novel MCR inhibitors targeting at such pocket by screening from small-molecule library, which effectively restored the colistin susceptibility of mcr-bearing E. coli. Interpretation: For the first time, we found that the prevalence of mcr-3 increased continuously during 2016-2019 in China, demonstrating that the withdrawal of colistin in husbandry failed to prevent the dissemination of mcr-3. Our study evidenced that the 5’-end codon bias appeared as a crucial regulator upon the fitness cost conferred by horizontally transferred genes. Most importantly, the putative lipid A binding pocket verified from current study was a promising target site for designing inhibitors against mcr-positive strains.

Project description:To characterize the differentially expressed genes between pathogenic avian E. coli and human E. coli ATCC 25922, Abstract Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a harmless common bacterium of poultry intestine, but with a wide range of genomic flexibility, is also causative agent of many poultry diseases collectively called colibacillosis that is blamed for high economic loss in poultry sector worldwide. Numerous studies have been conducted to check the prevalence of pathogenic E. coli in poultry and poultry products, however limited data are available regarding their resistance and virulence associated genes expression profile. This study examined the pathogenomic content of poultry E. coli by antibiotic susceptibility, biofilm formation and adhesion, invasion and intracellular survivability assays in Caco-2 and Raw 264.7 cell lines along with the determination of median lethal dose in two-day old chickens. A clinical pathogenic multidrug resistant (MDR) isolate, E. coli 381, isolated from broilers was found to be highly virulent in cell culture and in chicken model. Transcriptome analysis has been skewed towards bacterial pathogens because of the prioritization of poultry diseases. Comparative gene expression profile of MDR E. coli 381 and the reference human strain E. coli ATCC 25922 was done using Illumina HiSeq2500 transcriptome and results were verified by RT-qPCR analyses. A number of resistant encoding genes including multidrug transporters, multidrug resistance proteins, porins and autotransporters were identified. We also noticed overexpression of very important virulent genes (fimA, fimC, fimH and fimI) encoding the type-1 fimbrial proteins, curli fimbriae genes , invasin genes, toxin-encoding genes and biofilm forming regulatory genes . In addition, many types of stress and metal homeostasis controlling genes were among up-regulated genes in E. coli 381 as compared to reference strain. GO and KEGG pathway analysis results revealed that genes controlling secondary metabolism, drug transport, adhesion and invasion proteins, and mobile genetic elements were over-expressed in E. coli 381. Several genes involved in cellular and metabolic processes such as carbohydrate metabolism were responsible for stress tolerance. Seminal description of the transcriptomic results and other unique features of E. coli 381 confirmed that it is highly virulent and MDR strain of poultry origin. This comparative study provides new avenues for further work on molecular mechanisms to prevent resistance development in bacteria and to ensure public health.

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