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Title: Genome-Wide Study of the Defective Sucrose Fermenter Strain of Vibrio cholerae from the Latin American Cholera Epidemic

Journal Article · · PLoS ONE
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [4];  [1];  [1]
  1. Evandro Chagas Institute, Ananindeua (Brazil)
  2. Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  3. Radboud University, Nijmegen (Netherlands); San Diego State University, CA (United States)
  4. San Diego State University, CA (United States); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The 7th cholera pandemic reached Latin America in 1991, spreading from Peru to virtually all Latin American countries. During the late epidemic period, a strain that failed to ferment sucrose dominated cholera outbreaks in the Northern Brazilian Amazon region. In order to understand the genomic characteristics and the determinants of this altered sucrose fermenting phenotype, the genome of the strain IEC224 was sequenced. This paper reports a broad genomic study of this strain, showing its correlation with the major epidemic lineage. The potentially mobile genomic regions are shown to possess GC content deviation, and harbor the main V. cholera virulence genes. A novel bioinformatic approach was applied in order to identify the putative functions of hypothetical proteins, and was compared with the automatic annotation by RAST. The genome of a large bacteriophage was found to be integrated to the IEC224’s alanine aminopeptidase gene. The presence of this phage is shown to be a common characteristic of the El Tor strains from the Latin American epidemic, as well as its putative ancestor from Angola. The defective sucrose fermenting phenotype is shown to be due to a single nucleotide insertion in the V. cholerae sucrose-specific transportation gene. This frame-shift mutation truncated a membrane protein, altering its structural pore-like conformation. Further, the identification of a common bacteriophage reinforces both the monophyletic and African-Origin hypotheses for the main causative agent of the 1991 Latin America cholera epidemics.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Evandro Chagas Institute; Brazilian Ministry of Health; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Pará-FAPESPA
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1627519
Journal Information:
PLoS ONE, Vol. 7, Issue 5; ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher:
Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (6)

Pandemics, pathogenicity and changing molecular epidemiology of cholera in the era of global warming journal March 2017
Cholera Outbreaks in the El Tor Biotype Era and the Impact of the New El Tor Variants book January 2014
Sequence polymorphisms of rfbT among the Vibrio cholerae O1 strains in the Ogawa and Inaba serotype shifts journal January 2013
Genotype to phenotype: identification of diagnostic vibrio phenotypes using whole genome sequences journal February 2014
Population and Genetic Study of Vibrio cholerae from the Amazon Environment Confirms that the WASA-1 Prophage Is the Main Marker of the Epidemic Strain that Circulated in the Region journal November 2013
Genome sequences published outside of Standards in Genomic Sciences, May-June 2012 journal July 2012

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Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
bacteriophages
genomics
vibrio cholerae
Latin American people
cholera
viral genomics
sucrose
El Tor