1] Infection and Public Health Joint Unit, FISABIO (Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigación Biomédica y Sanitaria de la Comunidad Valenciana), University of Valencia-Cavanilles Institute for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Valencia, Spain. [2] CIBER (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red) in Epidemiology and Public Health, Valencia, Spain.
Public Health Centre, Alcoy, Spain.
Nat Genet. 2014 Nov;46(11):1205-11. doi: 10.1038/ng.3114. Epub 2014 Oct 5.
Legionella pneumophila is a strictly environmental pathogen and the etiological agent of legionellosis. It is known that non-vertical processes have a major role in the short-term evolution of pathogens, but little is known about the relevance of these and other processes in environmental bacteria. We report the whole-genome sequencing of 69 L. pneumophila strains linked to recurrent outbreaks in a single location (Alcoy, Spain) over 11 years. We found some examples where the genome sequences of isolates of the same sequence type and outbreak did not cluster together and were more closely related to sequences from different outbreaks. Our analyses identify 16 recombination events responsible for almost 98% of the SNPs detected in the core genome and an apparent acceleration in the evolutionary rate. These results have profound implications for the understanding of microbial populations and for public health interventions in Legionella outbreak investigations.
嗜肺军团菌是一种严格的环境病原体，也是军团病的病原体。已知非垂直过程在病原体的短期进化中起主要作用，但对这些和其他环境细菌过程的相关性知之甚少。我们报告了与西班牙阿尔科伊（Alcoy）一个地点（西班牙阿尔科伊（Alcoy））11 年来反复爆发相关的 69 株嗜肺军团菌菌株的全基因组测序。我们发现了一些例子，即同一序列型和爆发的分离株的基因组序列没有聚集在一起，而与来自不同爆发的序列更密切相关。我们的分析确定了 16 个重组事件，这些事件导致了核心基因组中检测到的近 98%的 SNPs，并且进化率明显加快。这些结果对理解微生物种群以及军团菌爆发调查中的公共卫生干预措施具有深远意义。
