Evolutionary Model of Cluster Divergence of the Emergent Marine Pathogen Vibrio vulnificus : From Genotype to Ecotype

Abstract

Vibrio vulnificus is an emergent marine pathogen and is the cause of a deadly septicemia. However, the genetic factors that differentiate its clinical and environmental strains and its several biotypes remain mostly enigmatic. In this work, we investigated the underlying genomic properties and population dynamics of the V. vulnificus species to elucidate the traits that make these strains emerge as a human pathogen. The acquisition of different ecological determinants could have allowed the development of highly divergent clusters with different lifestyles within the same environment. However, we identified strains from both clusters in the mucosa of aquaculture species, indicating that manmade niches are bringing strains from the two clusters together, posing a potential risk of recombination and of emergence of novel variants. We propose a new evolutionary model that provides a perspective that could be broadly applicable to other pathogenic vibrios and facultative bacterial pathogens to pursue strategies to prevent their infections.

Phylogeography of the marine pathogen, Vibrio vulnificus, revealed the ancestral scenarios of its evolution

“…Nonetheless, the use of the combined sequences of multiple housekeeping genes has been shown to provide high discriminatory power while retaining signatures of long‐term evolutionary relationships (Feil & Enright, 2004; Margos et al, 2008). The phylogeny inferred from MLST data in this study was highly congruent with the phylogeny inferred from draft or complete genomes (Lopez‐Perez et al, 2019; Roig et al, 2018). This challenges the observations made by some authors that MLST‐based phylogeny is inaccurate compared with phylogeny inferred from concatenated blocks of sequences or genome single‐nucleotide polymorphism profiles (Tsang, Lee, Yiu, Lau, & Woo, 2017).…”

“…Previous studies established the division of V . vulnificus populations into two main lineages; lineage I, also known as C clade (enriched for clinical strains), and lineage II, also known as E clade (enriched for environmental strains) (Bisharat et al, 2005; Cohen, Oliver, DePaola, Feil, & Boyd, 2007; Lopez‐Perez et al, 2019; Roig et al, 2018; Rosche, Yano, & Oliver, 2005). The current study provided new insights into the evolution of these populations and determined its phylogeography.…”

“…The phylogenomic analysis showed that V . vulnificus populations are largely divided into two main groups and two small clusters, one cluster dominated by strains from Western Europe and the other cluster by strains from Israel (Koton, Gordon, Chalifa‐Caspi, & Bisharat, 2015; Lopez‐Perez et al, 2019; Roig et al, 2018).…”

Genome- and Proteome-Wide Analysis of Lysine Acetylation in Vibrio vulnificus Vv180806 Reveals Its Regulatory Roles in Virulence and Antibiotic Resistance

“…Moreover, the incidence of V. vulnificus infection has risen worldwide, due to the ongoing increase in sea surface temperatures associated with global warming (Baker-Austin et al, 2013). Significantly, a large range of genomic diversity was observed for pathogenic V. vulnificus strains (López-Pérez et al, 2019). Though multiple virulence factors (VFs) (e.g., hemolysin, capsular polysaccharide [], etc.)…”

Improved Method for Transformation of Vibrio vulnificus by Electroporation

“…Reports demonstrate a steady upsurge in its global distribution in correlation with climate change, leading to the emergence of novel variants in regions with no history of V. vulnificus infections (Baker-Austin & Oliver, 2018;Baker-Austin, Trinanes, Gonzalez-Escalona, & Martinez-Urtaza, 2017;Paz, Bisharat, Paz, Kidar, & Cohen, 2007). Yet, despite its potency, V. vulnificus remains a poorly studied pathogen primarily due to the difficulty in identifying factors that differentiate pathogenic from non-pathogenic strains (Chatzidaki-Livanis, Hubbard, Gordon, Harwood, & Wright, 2006;Lopez-Perez et al, 2019).…”