Genomic differences between sequence types 1 and 104 of Streptococcus suis Serotype 2

Anusak Kerdsin; Dan Takeuchi; Yukihiro Akeda; Shota Nakamura; Marcelo Gottschalk; Kazunori Oishi

doi:10.7717/peerj.14144

Genomic differences between sequence types 1 and 104 of Streptococcus suis Serotype 2

PeerJ. 2022 Oct 6:10:e14144. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14144. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Anusak Kerdsin¹, Dan Takeuchi², Yukihiro Akeda^{2

3

4}, Shota Nakamura⁵, Marcelo Gottschalk⁶, Kazunori Oishi⁷

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Public Health, Kasetsart University Chalermphrakiat Sakon Nakhon Province Campus, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand.
² Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
³ Division of Infection Control and Prevention, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
⁴ Department of Bacteriology I, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.
⁵ Genome Information Research Center, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
⁶ Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Montreal, Québec, Canada.
⁷ Toyama Institute of Health, Toyama, Japan.

Abstract

Background: Streptococcus suis is a zoonotic pathogen that can cause invasive infections in humans who are in close contact with infected pigs or contaminated pork-derived products. S. suis serotype 2 sequence type (ST) 1 strains are mostly associated with meningitis, whereas ST104 strains are mostly recovered from sepsis cases in humans. No data are available for comparison of the ST1 and ST104 strains at the genomic level, particularly concerning virulence-associated genes. Thus, genomic comparison of both STs was performed in this study.

Methods: An ST1 isolate (ID26154) from the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient with meningitis and an ST104 isolate (ID24525) from the blood of a patient with sepsis were subjected to shotgun pyrosequencing using the 454 GS Junior System. Genomic comparison was conducted between the ST1 isolate and the ST104 isolate using the Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT) to identify the region of differences (RDs) between ST1 and ST104.

Results: Fifty-eight RDs were unique to the ST104 genome and were mainly involved in metabolism and cell functional activities, cell wall anchored proteins, bacteriophages and mobile genetic elements, ABC-type transporters, two-component signal transductions, and lantibiotic proteins. Some virulence genes mostly found in ST1 strains were also present in the ST104 genome. Whole-genome comparison is a powerful tool for identifying genomic region differences between different STs of S. suis serotype 2, leading to the identification of the molecular basis of virulence involved in the pathogenesis of the infection.

Keywords: Genome; Region of difference; Sequence type; Streptococcus suis; Virulence-associated gene.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Genomics
Humans
Sepsis* / genetics
Serogroup
Streptococcal Infections* / genetics
Streptococcus suis* / genetics
Swine

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B: 21406027), and the Office of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation and the Thailand Science Research and Innovation through the Kasetsart University Reinventing University Program 2021. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.