LAUSR

Escherichia coli is a pathogen commonly encountered in clinical laboratories, and is capable of causing a variety of diseases, both within the intestinal tract (intestinal pathogenic strains) and outside (extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli, or ExPEC). It is associated with urinary tract infections (UTIs), one of the most common infectious diseases in the world. This report represents the first comparative analysis of the draft genome sequences of 11 uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) strains isolated from two tertiary hospitals located in Dhaka and Sylhet, Bangladesh, and is focused on comparing their genomic characteristics to each other and to other available UPEC strains. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) confirmed the strains belong to ST59, ST131, ST219, ST361, ST410, ST448 and ST4204, with one of the isolates classified as a previously undocumented ST. De novo identification of the antibiotic resistance genes blaNDM-5, blaNDM-7, blaCTX-M-15 and blaOXA-1 was determined, and phenotypic-genotypic analysis of virulence revealed significant heterogeneity within UPEC phylogroups.