Reservoir water in Singapore contains ESBL-producing and carbapenem-resistant bacteria with conjugatable conserved gene cluster transfer between different species.

Abstract

As the role of the aquatic environment in the "One Health" approach has called increasing attention, the studies of Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) spreading in the water bodies have been reported worldwide. However, there are still limited studies on the AMR carrier in the reservoir water in Singapore. Since 2018, our group has collect water samples from six reservoirs in Singapore and isolated the beta-lactam resistant bacteria from them. We then characterized the isolates with Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and successfully identified ESBL-producing bacteria from three sampling reservoirs, and confirmed their resistance with both phenotypic and sequencing methods. To better understand the AMR spreading locally, we compared our isolates with isolates from other WGS studies in Singapore covered humans, food, and the enviroment. From there, we noticed the same sequence type (ST) as ST10, ST23, and ST38 has been shared among the environment, food, and humans, as well as the same beta-lactamase genes, are widely distributed among multiple sources. Further genetic environment comparison of beta-lactamase has suggested their spreading as conserved gene clusters among different species and sources. And this hypothesis has been supported by the successful conjugation of blaCTX-M-15 from Klebsiella pneumonia to Escherichia coli (E .coli). We also applied the shotgun metagenomic sequencing to understand the community of bacteria in reservoir water and detect the AMR genes. The composition of bacteria has shown different diversity among different samples. Besides, different beta-lactamase genes have been identified compared to culture depended methods. Here, we suggest that sequencing analysis has great potential in understanding AMR spreading in the "One-Health" approach. A genetic-based AMR risk assessment is in urgent need in Singapore.