Identifying geographic origins of the Escherichia coli isolates from food by a method based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms

Background: E.coli is an important foodborne pathogen. Rapid and robust tracking of the source of E. coli is the key step to control foodborne infections. Results: In this study, a genotyping and tracing method based on highly discriminatory single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was developed to investigate the geographical origin of E. coli in food. A highly informative set of 12 SNPs was derived from 4 housekeeping genes in E. coli multilocus sequence typing (MLST) database. A collection of 253 E. coli isolates from food in 12 countries and regions were screened, resulting in a total of 61 profiles, 35 geographically specific SNP profiles were revealed and further verified by blind sample test. Also, the evolutionary relationship of 61 SNP profiles with different geographical origins was established by the enhanced analysis Based Upon Related Sequence Types (eBURST) analysis, which provided evidence that strains of different geographical origins owned the same ancestor strain. Conclusions: Our study established a powerful method based on a set of 12 SNPs for identifying geographical origins. The blind sample analysis proved that this SNPs panel had a high traceability of E. coli in food. Furthermore, this method based on SNPs combined with eBURST analysis revealed the potential evolutionary relationship between E.coli strains of different geographical origins.