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The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs
The genus Brucella comprises various species of both veterinary and human medical importance. All species are genetically highly related to each other, sharing intra-species average nucleotide identities (ANI) of > 99%. Infections occur among various warm-blooded animal species, marine mammals, a...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5201264/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28036367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168872 |
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author | Scholz, Holger C. Mühldorfer, Kristin Shilton, Cathy Benedict, Suresh Whatmore, Adrian M. Blom, Jochen Eisenberg, Tobias |
author_facet | Scholz, Holger C. Mühldorfer, Kristin Shilton, Cathy Benedict, Suresh Whatmore, Adrian M. Blom, Jochen Eisenberg, Tobias |
author_sort | Scholz, Holger C. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The genus Brucella comprises various species of both veterinary and human medical importance. All species are genetically highly related to each other, sharing intra-species average nucleotide identities (ANI) of > 99%. Infections occur among various warm-blooded animal species, marine mammals, and humans. Until recently, amphibians had not been recognized as a host for Brucella. In this study, however, we show that novel Brucella species are distributed among exotic frogs worldwide. Comparative recA gene analysis of 36 frog isolates from various continents and different frog species revealed an unexpected high genetic diversity, not observed among classical Brucella species. In phylogenetic reconstructions the isolates consequently formed various clusters and grouped together with atypical more distantly related brucellae, like B. inopinata, strain BO2, and Australian isolates from rodents, some of which were isolated as human pathogens. Of one frog isolate (10RB9215) the genome sequence was determined. Comparative genome analysis of this isolate and the classical Brucella species revealed additional genetic material, absent from classical Brucella species but present in Ochrobactrum, the closest genetic neighbor of Brucella, and in other soil associated genera of the Alphaproteobacteria. The presence of gene clusters encoding for additional metabolic functions, flanked by tRNAs and mobile genetic elements, as well as by bacteriophages is suggestive for a different ecology compared to classical Brucella species. Furthermore it suggests that amphibian isolates may represent a link between free living soil saprophytes and the pathogenic Brucella with a preferred intracellular habitat. We therefore assume that brucellae from frogs have a reservoir in soil and, in contrast to classical brucellae, undergo extensive horizontal gene transfer. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5201264 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-52012642017-01-19 The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs Scholz, Holger C. Mühldorfer, Kristin Shilton, Cathy Benedict, Suresh Whatmore, Adrian M. Blom, Jochen Eisenberg, Tobias PLoS One Research Article The genus Brucella comprises various species of both veterinary and human medical importance. All species are genetically highly related to each other, sharing intra-species average nucleotide identities (ANI) of > 99%. Infections occur among various warm-blooded animal species, marine mammals, and humans. Until recently, amphibians had not been recognized as a host for Brucella. In this study, however, we show that novel Brucella species are distributed among exotic frogs worldwide. Comparative recA gene analysis of 36 frog isolates from various continents and different frog species revealed an unexpected high genetic diversity, not observed among classical Brucella species. In phylogenetic reconstructions the isolates consequently formed various clusters and grouped together with atypical more distantly related brucellae, like B. inopinata, strain BO2, and Australian isolates from rodents, some of which were isolated as human pathogens. Of one frog isolate (10RB9215) the genome sequence was determined. Comparative genome analysis of this isolate and the classical Brucella species revealed additional genetic material, absent from classical Brucella species but present in Ochrobactrum, the closest genetic neighbor of Brucella, and in other soil associated genera of the Alphaproteobacteria. The presence of gene clusters encoding for additional metabolic functions, flanked by tRNAs and mobile genetic elements, as well as by bacteriophages is suggestive for a different ecology compared to classical Brucella species. Furthermore it suggests that amphibian isolates may represent a link between free living soil saprophytes and the pathogenic Brucella with a preferred intracellular habitat. We therefore assume that brucellae from frogs have a reservoir in soil and, in contrast to classical brucellae, undergo extensive horizontal gene transfer. Public Library of Science 2016-12-30 /pmc/articles/PMC5201264/ /pubmed/28036367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168872 Text en © 2016 Scholz et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Scholz, Holger C. Mühldorfer, Kristin Shilton, Cathy Benedict, Suresh Whatmore, Adrian M. Blom, Jochen Eisenberg, Tobias The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title | The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title_full | The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title_fullStr | The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title_full_unstemmed | The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title_short | The Change of a Medically Important Genus: Worldwide Occurrence of Genetically Diverse Novel Brucella Species in Exotic Frogs |
title_sort | change of a medically important genus: worldwide occurrence of genetically diverse novel brucella species in exotic frogs |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5201264/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28036367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168872 |
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