1. Lineage specific evolution and gene flow in Listeria monocytogenes is independent of bacteriophages
- Author
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Joseph D. Ralph, Andrew D. Millard, Roger Stephan, Stephen D. Bentley, Nicholas J. Croucher, Taurai Tasara, Roxana Zamudio, Megan De Ste Croix, Marco R. Oggioni, Richard D. Haigh, Katrin Zurfluh, Min Jung Kwun, Zamudio R, Haigh RD, Ralph JD, De Ste Croix M, Tasara M, Zurfluh K, Kwun MJ, Millard AD, Bentley SD, Croucher NJ, Stephan R, Oggioni MR, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Cou
- Subjects
Gene Flow ,Gene Transfer, Horizontal ,RECOMBINATION ,Biology ,medicine.disease_cause ,Listeria monocytogenes, genomics, epidemiology, food borne infection, cut off, outbreak ,Genome ,Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide ,Microbiology ,Gene flow ,Evolution, Molecular ,03 medical and health sciences ,Listeria monocytogenes ,0603 Evolutionary Biology ,Phylogenetics ,medicine ,TOOL ,Bacteriophages ,Listeriosis ,LISTERIA-MONOCYTOGENES ,VERSION ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Phylogeny ,030304 developmental biology ,Genetics ,Recombination, Genetic ,0303 health sciences ,Science & Technology ,IDENTIFICATION ,030306 microbiology ,STRAINS ,Genetic Variation ,GENOME SEQUENCE ,Genomic signature ,TIME ,ESCHERICHIA-COLI ,Horizontal gene transfer ,PHAST ,Multilocus sequence typing ,Life Sciences & Biomedicine ,Genome, Bacterial ,SNP array ,Multilocus Sequence Typing ,0605 Microbiology - Abstract
Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen causing systemic infection with high mortality. To allow efficient tracking of outbreaks a clear definition of the genomic signature of a cluster of related isolates is required, but lineage-specific characteristics call for a more detailed understanding of evolution. In our work, we used core genome MLST (cgMLST) to identify new outbreaks combined to core genome SNP analysis to characterize the population structure and gene flow between lineages. Whilst analysing differences between the four lineages of L. monocytogenes we have detected differences in the recombination rate, and interestingly also divergence in the SNP differences between sub-lineages. In addition, the exchange of core genome variation between the lineages exhibited a distinct pattern, with lineage III being the best donor for horizontal gene transfer. Whilst attempting to link bacteriophage-mediated transduction to observed gene transfer, we found an inverse correlation between phage presence in a lineage and the extent of recombination. Irrespective of the profound differences in recombination rates observed between sub-lineages and lineages, we found that the previously proposed cut-off of 10 allelic differences in cgMLST can be still considered valid for the definition of a foodborne outbreak cluster of L. monocytogenes.
- Published
- 2020