Chen Swaine L
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
Infectious Diseases Group, Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
Front Microbiol. 2019 Jun 28;10:1447. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019.01447. eCollection 2019.
, also known as Group B Streptococcus (GBS), is a bacteria with truly protean biology. It infects a variety of hosts, among which the most commonly studied are humans, cattle, and fish. GBS holds a singular position in the history of bacterial genomics, as it was the substrate used to describe one of the first major conceptual advances of comparative genomics, the idea of the pan-genome. In this review, I describe a brief history of GBS and the major contributions of genomics to understanding its genome plasticity and evolution as well as its molecular epidemiology, focusing on the three hosts mentioned above. I also discuss one of the major recent paradigm shifts in our understanding of GBS evolution and disease burden: foodborne GBS can cause invasive infections in humans.
B族链球菌（GBS）是一种生物学特性极为多变的细菌。它可感染多种宿主，其中研究最多的是人类、牛和鱼类。GBS在细菌基因组学历史上占据独特地位，因为它是用于描述比较基因组学首批重大概念性进展之一——泛基因组概念的研究对象。在本综述中，我将简述GBS的历史以及基因组学在理解其基因组可塑性、进化及其分子流行病学方面的主要贡献，重点关注上述三种宿主。我还将讨论近期我们对GBS进化和疾病负担理解方面的一个主要范式转变：食源性GBS可导致人类侵袭性感染。
