Cuénod Aline, Chac Denise, Khan Ashraful I, Chowdhury Fahima, Hyppa Randy W, Markiewicz Susan M, Rice Amelia, Kholwadwala Akhil, Calderwood Stephen B, Ryan Edward T, Harris Jason B, LaRocque Regina C, Bhuiyan Taufiqur R, Smith Gerald R, Qadri Firdausi, Lypaczewski Patrick, Weil Ana A, Shapiro B Jesse
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 1;16(1):5830. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-60699-0.
Two circular chromosomes are a defining feature of the bacterial family Vibrionaceae, including the pathogen Vibrio cholerae, with rare reports of isolates with a single, fused chromosome. Here, we use long-read sequencing to analyse 467 V. cholerae O1 isolates from 47 cholera patients and household contacts in Bangladesh. We identify several independent chromosome fusion events that are likely transmissible within a household. Fusions occur in a 12 kilobase-pair homologous sequence shared between the two chromosomes and are stable for at least 200 generations under laboratory conditions. We find no detectable effect of fusion on V. cholerae growth, virulence factor expression, or biofilm formation. The factors promoting fusion, affecting chromosome stability, and subtle phenotypic or clinical consequences merit further investigation.
两个环状染色体是弧菌科细菌的一个决定性特征，包括病原体霍乱弧菌，仅有罕见报道称存在具有单个融合染色体的分离株。在此，我们使用长读长测序技术分析了来自孟加拉国47名霍乱患者及其家庭接触者的467株霍乱弧菌O1分离株。我们鉴定出了几个可能在家庭内部传播的独立染色体融合事件。融合发生在两条染色体之间共享的一个12千碱基对的同源序列中，并且在实验室条件下至少200代都是稳定的。我们发现融合对霍乱弧菌的生长、毒力因子表达或生物膜形成没有可检测到的影响。促进融合、影响染色体稳定性以及细微表型或临床后果的因素值得进一步研究。
