RND-mediated efflux couples antimicrobial resistance and hypervirulence in contemporary Vibrio cholerae

Abstract

The prevailing view in bacterial pathogenesis is that antimicrobial resistance and virulence are constrained by evolutionary trade-offs, with resistance mechanisms imposing fitness costs that attenuate pathogenic potential. Herein we document that contemporary Vibrio cholerae clinical isolates from the ongoing seventh pandemic have circumvented this paradigm by coupling multidrug resistance with hypervirulence. We examined five geographically diverse Wave 3 isolates collected between 2017 and 2019 and compared them to early pandemic strains. These contemporary isolates exhibited both broad-spectrum antimicrobial resistance and markedly enhanced colonization capacity in the infant mouse model. Phylogenetic analysis of 67 O1 El Tor genomes spanning 1960–2019 confirmed that the isolates cluster within a representative Wave 3 sublineage. We identified the VexB RND efflux pump as a mediator of this coupled phenotype. Elevated vexB expression in the contemporary isolates conferred resistance to multiple antibiotic classes, while vexB inactivation simultaneously impaired resistance and colonization. This dual function was not observed in early pandemic strains, consistent with a recent evolutionary adaptation. VexB-mediated hypervirulence occurred through multiple pathways independent of cholera toxin and toxin-coregulated pilus production levels. VexB deletion impaired bacterial adherence to intestinal epithelial cells, impaired motility, and increased susceptibility to membrane-active antimicrobials. In contrast, laboratory evolution under antibiotic pressure alone generated resistant but avirulent strains, demonstrating that complex selective forces in nature enabled the co-optimization of resistance and virulence. These findings establish VexB as a molecular link between antimicrobial resistance and hypervirulence in pandemic V. cholerae, highlighting efflux pumps as dual-function therapeutic targets whose inhibition could both restore antibiotic activity and attenuate disease.