Multilocus Sequence Typing and Phylogenetic Analysis of Propionibacterium acnes

Abstract

Propionibacterium acnes is a commensal of human skin but is also implicated in the pathogenesis of acne vulgaris, in biofilmassociated infections of medical devices and endophthalmitis, and in infections of bone and dental root canals. Recent studies associate P. acnes with prostate cancer. As the species includes evolutionary lineages with distinct association with health and disease, there is a need for a high-resolution typing scheme. Recently, two multilocus sequence typing (MLST) schemes were reported, one based on nine and one based on seven housekeeping genes. In the present study, the two schemes were compared with reference to a phylogenetic tree based on 78 P. acnes genomes and their gene contents. Further support for a basically clonal population structure of P. acnes and a scenario of the global spread of epidemic clones of P. acnes was obtained. Compared to the Belfast scheme, the Aarhus MLST scheme (http://pacnes.mlst.net/), which is based on nine genes, offers significantly enhanced resolution and phylogenetic inferences more concordant with analyses based on a comprehensive sampling of the entire genomes, their gene contents, and their putative pathogenic potential.

Draft Genome Sequence of an Antibiotic-Resistant Propionibacterium acnes Strain, PRP-38, from the Novel Type IC Cluster

“…It forms a highly distinct MLST cluster (99% bootstrap) within the large type I division along with isolates PV66 (ST85), PRP-39 (ST70), and HL097PA1 (ST70), all from acne patients in the United Kingdom and United States (all singletons). The distinct nature of this group is further supported by phylogenetic analysis of whole-genome housekeeping gene sequences (8). All isolates within this group display resistance to antiacne antibiotics resulting from 16S (1058G¡C) and 23S rRNA (2058/2059A¡G) point mutations, display a dual reaction with anti-type IA and -type II monoclonal antibodies (11), express dermatan sulfatebinding proteins (10), are hemolytic, and do not ferment sorbitol.…”

Evaluation of Clostridium ljungdahlii DSM 13528 reference genes in gene expression studies by qRT-PCR

“…Acetogens fix inorganic carbon (CO and CO 2 ) for survival through the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, in which formate tertrahydrofolate ligase is an essential enzyme. Although fotl is not widely used as a reference gene for normalization, it is considered to be a putative housekeeping gene in acetogens (26,27). Additionally, in this study, the expression of fotl under all five conditions was relatively stable in C. ljungdahlii DSM 13528.…”

Multilocus Sequence Typing of the Porcine and Human Gastric Pathogen Helicobacter suis

“…Keeping in mind that H. suis isolation remains extremely difficult and time-consuming, we decided to develop an MLST technique which can be applied on samples without the need for in vitro cultivation. As a genotyping method and technique, MLST has often been used in strain typing studies and can be considered a gold standard (15,18,(20)(21)(22). For MLST analysis of strains of H. pylori, a closely related major human gastric pathogen, 7 housekeeping genes are used (atpA, efp, mutY, ppa, trpC, yphC, and ureI) (17,19).…”

“…Multilocus sequence typing (MLST), introduced in 1998, has been widely used in molecular epidemiology and population biology of bacterial species (13)(14)(15)(16) and has proven its usefulness for typing strains of other Helicobacter species (17)(18)(19). In addition, this technique uses the unambiguousness and portability of nucleotide sequence data, which allows results from different laboratories to be compared without exchanging strains (20)(21)(22). Although it also has some drawbacks, including a relatively high cost (21), MLST is considered a gold standard for strain typing of bacterial species.…”