Background
Clinically important lineages in
Klebsiella
, especially those expressing multi-drug resistance (MDR), pose severe threats to public health worldwide. They arose from the co-evolution of the vertically inherited core genome and horizontal gene transfers by plasmids, which has not been systematically explored.
Methods
We designed KleTy, which consists of dedicated typing schemes for both the core genome and plasmids in
Klebsiella
. We compared the performance of KleTy with many state-of-the-art pipelines using both simulated and real data.
Results
Employing KleTy, we genotyped 33,272
Klebsiella
genomes, categorizing them into 1773 distinct populations and predicting the presence of 87,410 plasmids from 837 clusters (PCs). Notably,
Klebsiella
is the center of the plasmid-exchange network within Enterobacteriaceae. Our results associated the international emergence of prevalent
Klebsiella
populations with only four carbapenem-resistance (CR) PCs, two hypervirulent PCs, and two hvCR-PCs encoding both carbapenemase and hypervirulence. Furthermore, we observed the ongoing international emergence of
bla
NDM
, accompanied by the replacement of the previously dominant population,
bla
KPC
-encoding HC1360_8 (CC258), during 2003–2018, with the emerging
bla
NDM
-encoding HC1360_3 (CC147) thereafter. Additionally, expansions of hypervirulent carbapenem-resistant
Klebsiella pneumoniae
(hvCRKP) were evidenced in both populations, driven by plasmids of MDR-hypervirulence convergences.
Conclusions
The study illuminates how the global genetic landscape of
Klebsiella
has been shaped by the co-evolution of both the core genome and the plasmids, underscoring the importance of surveillance and control of the dissemination of plasmids for curtailing the emergence of hvCRKPs.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13073-024-01399-0.