Response to Comment on "The role of wildlife (wild birds) in the global transmission of antimicrobial resistance genes".

Dear Editor,

Since our first identification of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance gene mcr-1 in 2015 (Liu et al., 2016), it has been described in human clinics, domestic animals, foods, and the environment worldwide (Schwarz & Johnson, 2016). Although it is still rare, the emergence of mcr-1 in wild animals is of great concern. We summarized two previous reports on mcr-1 in wild birds from Lithuania and Argentina to describe its emergence and characteristics in wildlife and highlight the potentially important role of wild animals, particularly birds, in its global transmission (Wang et al., 2017). The first detection of mcr-1 in wildlife in Asia was identified in an extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli strain isolated from Eurasian coot (Fulica atra), which was located on a ~63 kb IncI2 plasmid, frequently associated with the global transmission of mcr-1 (Mohsin et al., 2016). The description of mcr-1 in wild birds in Asia is very important to better understand the role that wild birds may play in the global spread of mcr-1, and should have been summarized in our recent review. However, our review only summarized articles published up to December 2016, and as such the then unpublished report on CTX-M-15-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in wild birds in Pakistan (Raza et al., 2017) was not included.