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Adaptive mutations and replacements of virulence traits in the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak population.

ABSTRACT: The sequencing of highly virulent Escherichia coli O104:H4 strains isolated during the outbreak of bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome in Europe in 2011 revealed a genome that contained a Shiga toxin encoding prophage and a plasmid encoding enteroaggregative fimbriae. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of a strain isolated in Sweden from a patient who had travelled to Tunisia in 2010 (E112/10) and was found to differ from the outbreak strains by only 38 SNPs in non-repetitive regions, 16 of which were mapped to the branch to the outbreak strain. We identified putatively adaptive mutations in genes for transporters, outer surface proteins and enzymes involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates. A comparative analysis with other historical strains showed that E112/10 contained Shiga toxin prophage genes of the same genotype as the outbreak strain, while these genes have been replaced by a different genotype in two otherwise very closely related strains isolated in the Republic of Georgia in 2009. We also present the genome sequences of two enteroaggregative E. coli strains affiliated with phylogroup A (C43/90 and C48/93) that contain the agg genes for the AAF/I-type fimbriae characteristic of the outbreak population. Interestingly, C43/90 also contained a tet/mer antibiotic resistance island that was nearly identical in sequence to that of the outbreak strain, while the corresponding island in the Georgian strains was most similar to E. coli strains of other serotypes. We conclude that the pan-genome of the outbreak population is shared with strains of the A phylogroup and that its evolutionary history is littered with gene replacement events, including most recently independent acquisitions of antibiotic resistance genes in the outbreak strains and its nearest neighbors. The results are summarized in a refined evolutionary model for the emergence of the O104:H4 outbreak population.

SUBMITTER: Guy L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3651199 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Adaptive mutations and replacements of virulence traits in the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak population.

Guy Lionel L Jernberg Cecilia C Arvén Norling Jenny J Ivarsson Sofie S Hedenström Ingela I Melefors Öjar Ö Liljedahl Ulrika U Engstrand Lars L Andersson Siv G E SG

PloS one 20130510 5

The sequencing of highly virulent Escherichia coli O104:H4 strains isolated during the outbreak of bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome in Europe in 2011 revealed a genome that contained a Shiga toxin encoding prophage and a plasmid encoding enteroaggregative fimbriae. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of a strain isolated in Sweden from a patient who had travelled to Tunisia in 2010 (E112/10) and was found to differ from the outbreak strains by only 38 SNPs in non-repetitive r ...[more]

PMID: 23675451

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Project description:BACKGROUND: An Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak in Germany in summer 2011 caused 53 deaths, over 4000 individual infections across Europe, and considerable economic, social and political impact. This outbreak was the first in a position to exploit rapid, benchtop high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and crowdsourced data analysis early in its investigation, establishing a new paradigm for rapid response to disease threats. We describe a novel strategy for design of diagnostic PCR primers that exploited this rapid draft bacterial genome sequencing to distinguish between E. coli O104:H4 outbreak isolates and other pathogenic E. coli isolates, including the historical hæmolytic uræmic syndrome (HUSEC) E. coli HUSEC041 O104:H4 strain, which possesses the same serotype as the outbreak isolates. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Primers were designed using a novel alignment-free strategy against eleven draft whole genome assemblies of E. coli O104:H4 German outbreak isolates from the E. coli O104:H4 Genome Analysis Crowd-Sourcing Consortium website, and a negative sequence set containing 69 E. coli chromosome and plasmid sequences from public databases. Validation in vitro against 21 'positive' E. coli O104:H4 outbreak and 32 'negative' non-outbreak EHEC isolates indicated that individual primer sets exhibited 100% sensitivity for outbreak isolates, with false positive rates of between 9% and 22%. A minimal combination of two primers discriminated between outbreak and non-outbreak E. coli isolates with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Draft genomes of isolates of disease outbreak bacteria enable high throughput primer design and enhanced diagnostic performance in comparison to traditional molecular assays. Future outbreak investigations will be able to harness HTS rapidly to generate draft genome sequences and diagnostic primer sets, greatly facilitating epidemiology and clinical diagnostics. We expect that high throughput primer design strategies will enable faster, more precise responses to future disease outbreaks of bacterial origin, and help to mitigate their societal impact.

Dataset Information

Adaptive mutations and replacements of virulence traits in the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak population.

Publications

Adaptive mutations and replacements of virulence traits in the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak population.

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