Salmonella Minnesota is an under-studied zoonotic foodborne pathogen, which is relatively common in chicken/poultry in South America…however, sometimes, S. Minnesota can “hitchhike” from South America to other parts of the world! 🥾 Several countries (primarily in Europe) have been using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to track the spread of S. Minnesota, but very little is known about S. Minnesota in Africa…even though we know S. Minnesota has made its way to South Africa before! ✈️

In collaboration with Itumeleng Matle’s group at South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council-Onderstepoort Veterinary Research (ARC-OVR), we used WGS to track S. Minnesota in frozen poultry imported into South Africa from South America! In addition to identifying multidrug-resistant (MDR) isolates, we identified a cluster of nearly identical S. Minnesota genomes, which uniquely possessed blaCTX-M-8, a relatively rare antimicrobial resistance (AMR) gene in Salmonella, which we hypothesize was acquired by this cluster recently, from E. coli! 💊

Overall, our study provides insight into the intercontinental dissemination of S. Minnesota and its associated AMR determinants via the global poultry trade. You can check out the preprint here! 🐓