Prevalence of efflux pump and heavy metal tolerance encoding genes among Salmonella enterica serovar Infantis strains from diverse sources in Brazil

Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Infantis (S. Infantis) is a non-typhoid, zoonotic and foodborne serovar with worldwide distribution, and often associated with increasing antimicrobial resistance. Efflux pumps are antimicrobial resistance mechanisms able to promote and increase resistance levels to multiple distinct drug classes. Heavy metal tolerance genes have been demonstrated to promote resistance against these compounds and act in the co-selection of antimicrobial resistant strains. Despite the relevance of S. Infantis in clinical and non-clinical fields, few studies worldwide have investigated the occurrence of such genes in strains from diverse sources. Therefore, the present study aimed at determining the prevalence of antimicrobial efflux pump and heavy metal tolerance genes and their genomic relatedness through core-genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) of 80 S. Infantis strains isolated from food, environmental, human and animal sources from 2013 to 2018 in Brazil. Twenty efflux pump encoding genes were detected, with 17 of these (acrA, acrB, baeR, crp, emrB, emrR, hns, kdpE, kpnF, marA, marR, mdtK, msbA, rsmA, sdiA, soxR and soxS) detected in all strains studied, golS in 98.75%, mdfA in 58.75% and tet(A) in 37.5%. Tolerance genes to arsenic (arsR) were detected in 100% of the strains, gold (golS and golT) in 98.75%, silver (silABCDEFPRS) in 36.25% and mercury (merR and merT) in 1.25%. cgMLST demonstrated a closer genetic relationship among strains harboring similar profiles of heavy metal and efflux pump encoding genes, despite their origin. In conclusion, the high prevalence of some efflux pump and heavy metal tolerance encoding genes alert us about the importance of strong surveillance measures to monitor resistance and the transmission of S. Infantis among diverse sources in Brazil.