Determination of Microbial Diversity of Aeromonas Strains on the Basis of Multilocus Sequence Typing, Phenotype, and Presence of Putative Virulence Genes
Open Access
- 15 July 2011
- journal article
- Published by American Society for Microbiology in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
- Vol. 77 (14), 4986-5000
- https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.00708-11
Abstract
The genus Aeromonas has been described as comprising several species associated with the aquatic environment, which represents their principal reservoir. Aeromonas spp. are commonly isolated from diseased and healthy fish, but the involvement of such bacteria in human infection and gastroenteritis has frequently been reported. The primary challenge in establishing an unequivocal link between the Aeromonas genus and pathogenesis in humans is the extremely complicated taxonomy. With the aim of clarifying taxonomic relationships among the strains and phenotypes, a multilocus sequencing approach was developed and applied to characterize 23 type and reference strains of Aeromonas spp. and a collection of 77 field strains isolated from fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. All strains were also screened for putative determinants of virulence by PCR ( ast , ahh1 , act , asa1 , eno , ascV , and aexT ) and the production of acylated homoserine lactones (AHLs). In addition, the phenotypic fingerprinting obtained from 29 biochemical tests was submitted to the nonparametric combination (NPC) test methodology to define the statistical differences among the identified genetic clusters. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) achieved precise strain genotyping, and the phylogenetic analysis of concatenated sequences delineated the relationship among the taxa belonging to the genus Aeromonas , providing a powerful tool for outbreak traceability, host range diffusion, and ecological studies. The NPC test showed the feasibility of phenotypic differentiation among the majority of the MLST clusters by using a selection of tests or the entire biochemical fingerprinting. A Web-based MLST sequence database ( http://pubmlst.org/aeromonas ) specific for the Aeromonas genus was developed and implemented with all the results.Keywords
This publication has 70 references indexed in Scilit:
- Unraveling the mechanism of action of a new type III secretion system effector AexU from Aeromonas hydrophilaMicrobial Pathogenesis, 2010
- Distribution of Virulence Factors and Molecular Fingerprinting of Aeromonas Species Isolates from Water and Clinical Samples: Suggestive Evidence of Water-to-Human TransmissionApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2010
- The GenusAeromonas: Taxonomy, Pathogenicity, and InfectionClinical Microbiology Reviews, 2010
- Structural Basis for the Kexin-like Serine Protease from Aeromonas sobria as Sepsis-causing FactorOnline Journal of Public Health Informatics, 2009
- DnaSP v5: a software for comprehensive analysis of DNA polymorphism dataBioinformatics, 2009
- Polyphasic approach of bacterial classification — An overview of recent advancesIndian Journal of Microbiology, 2007
- Persistence, Transmission, and Virulence Characteristics of Aeromonas Strains in a Duckweed Aquaculture-Based Hospital Sewage Water Recycling Plant in BangladeshApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2007
- Sequences, sequence clusters and bacterial speciesPhilosophical Transactions B, 2006
- Application of Phylogenetic Networks in Evolutionary StudiesMolecular Biology and Evolution, 2005
- Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programsNucleic Acids Research, 1997