1 INTRODUCTION
The emergence and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the
environment has become a global concern. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
has been an area of focus during the past two decades and was
recognizing AMR as a potential and serious threat for global public
health among animals, environment and humans (Tacconelli et al., 2018).
AMRs can be disseminated rapidly through various possible pathways,
including foodborne pathogens, insects, wastewater, pet, food producing
or wild animals, etc. (Q. E. Yang et al., 2019). In particular, more
than 25 outbreaks of human infectious disease outbreaks were reported,
11 of which related to animals in farms, petting zoos and zoos during
1990 to 2000 (Bender & Shulman, 2004). Human may be infected by
contacting wild animals directly or indirectly in some interactive
activities of zoos, but this situation is easily ignored. The role of
wild animals in zoos in the epidemiology of multidrug resistance (MDR)
is a little concerned. Some previous studies have shown that bacterial
isolates from wild animal living in human activity areas show stronger
drug resistance compared with wild animals living in remote areas (Allen
et al., 2011; Cole et al., 2005; Kozak, Boerlin, Janecko, Reid-Smith, &
Jardine, 2009; Rolland, Hausfater, Marshall, & Levy, 1985; Skurnik et
al., 2006). As a part of human urban life, the captive wild animals in
zoos are obviously more closely contacted with human. Therefore, the
captive animals in zoos may become a potential natural reservoir for
AMRs and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
It is now abundantly clear that bacteria are able to meet the
evolutionary challenge of combating antimicrobial chemotherapy, often by
acquiring preexisting resistance determinants from the bacterial gene
pool. This is achieved through the concerted activities of mobile
genetic elements able to move within or between DNA molecules, which
include insertion sequences, transposons, and gene cassettes/integrons,
and those that are able to transfer between bacterial cells, such as
plasmids and integrative conjugative elements. It has been proved that
MDR bacteria from captive wild animals can carry various mobile genetic
elements, such as IncI1 harboring bla CTX-M-1 and
qnrS1 in E.coli from Czech zoo (Dobiasova et al., 2013), integron
(class I and II) and plasmid carryingbla CMY-26,qnr and aac(6’)-Ib-cr in
Gram-negative bacterial isolates from Japanese zoo(Ahmed et al., 2007),
MDR Salmonella Enterobacter from captive wild animals and foreign
animals in Ohio(Farias et al., 2015). It is suggested above that the
emergence and dissemination of Multidrug Resistant pathogenic bacteria
carried by wild animals in zoos may increase a serious public health
risk between human, animal and environment.
To further understand the routes of dissemination of AMRs harboring
bacteria in zoo, in the present study, fresh animal feces samples were
collected and Enterobacteriaceae isolates were isolated in the
routine monitoring of bacterial diseases in Zhengzhou zoo, Henan
province, China. An MDR Klebsiella pneumoniae isolate from Red
Kangaroo was severe drug resistance, including
cephalosporins, such as the second
generation cephalosporins (Cefuroxime Sodium ), the third
generation cephalosporins
(Ceftriaxone ) and even the
fourth generation cephalosporins
(Cefepime ). The whole
genome sequencing (WGS) analysis was subjected to evaluate the
relationship between its plasmid and drug-resistant gene related
elements and human clinical isolates.