Turner, C.E. orcid.org/0000-0002-4458-9748, Holden, M.T.G., Blane, B. et al. (3 more authors) (2019) The emergence of successful streptococcus pyogenes lineages through convergent pathways of capsule loss and recombination directing high toxin expression. mBio, 10 (6). e02521.
Abstract
Gene transfer and homologous recombination in Streptococcus pyogenes has the potential to trigger the emergence of pandemic lineages, as exemplified by lineages of emm1 and emm89 that emerged in the 1980s and 2000s, respectively. Although near-identical replacement gene transfer events in the nga (NADase) and slo (streptolysin O) loci conferring high expression of these toxins underpinned the success of these lineages, extension to other emm genotype lineages is unreported. The emergent emm89 lineage was characterized by five regions of homologous recombination additional to nga-slo, including complete loss of the hyaluronic acid capsule synthesis locus hasABC, a genetic trait replicated in two other leading emm types and recapitulated by other emm types by inactivating mutations. We hypothesized that other leading genotypes may have undergone similar recombination events. We analyzed a longitudinal data set of genomes from 344 clinical invasive disease isolates representative of locations across England, dating from 2001 to 2011, and an international collection of S. pyogenes genomes representing 54 different genotypes and found frequent evidence of recombination events at the nga-slo locus predicted to confer higher toxin genotype. We identified multiple associations between recombination at this locus and inactivating mutations within hasAB, suggesting convergent evolutionary pathways in successful genotypes. This included common genotypes emm28 and emm87. The combination of no or low capsule and high expression of nga and slo may underpin the success of many emergent S. pyogenes lineages of different genotypes, triggering new pandemics, and could change the way S. pyogenes causes disease.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | group A Streptococcus; NADase; Streptococcus pyogenes; streptolysin O; convergent evolution; homologous recombination; hyaluronic acid capsule; whole-genome sequencing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number WELLCOME TRUST (THE) 208765/Z/17/Z |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Dec 2019 11:43 |
Last Modified: | 23 Dec 2019 11:43 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Society for Microbiology |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1128/mbio.02521-19 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:154652 |