Emergence of -carrying in China.

INTRODUCTION

was defined as a novel species in the genus. in 2019, however, antimicrobial resistance, such as carbapenem resistance, has rarely been described in . This study described the molecular features of four carbapenem-resistant 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 strains. The precise species of strains were identified by average nucleotide identity (ANI) and DNA-DNA hybridization (isDDH). The clonal relatedness of four strains and additional 15 ones from NCBI were examined through phylogenetic analysis. The molecular features of and genetic structure of carbapenemase- encoding plasmids were characterized through genomic annotation and analysis.

RESULTS

The results revealed the emergence of -carrying strains in China. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis showed that all 19 belonged to the same sequence type of ST414. Core SNP analysis suggested the potential intrahospital clonal transmission of ST414 . The carbapenemase-encoding gene 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 -carrying . Further surveillance should be advocated to monitor the dissemination of carbapenem-resistant and -harboring IncC-type plasmids in China.