ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1666215
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Health: a One Health Approach to Antimicrobial Resistance and Sustainable PracticesView all 8 articles
Emergence of NDM-1 on IncR-IncFIA(HI1) Plasmid in Carbapenem-Resistant Kluyvera ascorbata from China
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Basic Medical Sciences, Beihua University, Jilin, China
- 2Department of Science and Education，Affiliated Hospital of Beihua University,Jilin, China, Beihua University School of Medicine, Jilin, China
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New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase 1 (NDM-1), a member of the B-type metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) family, emerged as a major focus in resistance research, raising serious concerns about the treatment of bacterial infections over the past decade. Kluyvera ascorbata, generally considered a bacterium of low pathogenicity and rarely associated with severe infections, has nonetheless demonstrated significant resistance to a broad spectrum of antibiotics in recent studies. In this study, we successfully isolated a K. ascorbata strain harboring the antibiotic-resistant genes blaNDM-1 and blaCTX-M-77 from a fecal sample of a patient with diarrhea in China. The strain was accurately identified using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Additionally, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the strain against various antimicrobial agents was determined using agar dilution and microdilution method. The results indicated that the strain exhibited resistance to all tested antimicrobial agents. The blaNDM-1 resistance gene was located on an IncFIA(HI1), IncR plasmid, as revealed by whole-genome sequencing.A detailed analysis of the plasmid's size, number, and location was conducted using S1-nuclease pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (S1-PFGE), Southern blotting, and conjugation experiments. These experiments successfully demonstrated the transfer of the plasmid carrying blaNDM-1 into the recipient bacterium Escherichia coli EC600. These findings underscore the urgent need for continuous surveillance of the blaNDM-1-carrying plasmid in clinical isolate of K. ascorbata to prevent and contain its further dissemination in China.
Keywords: Kluyvera ascorbata, NDM-1, CTX-M-77, IncR, IncFIA(HI1)
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, 周, Shuai, 张, Hou, Liu, Li and Han. 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: Huiming Han, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Beihua University, Jilin, China
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