Abstract
The marine bacterium Vibrio vulnificus infects humans via food or water contamination, leading to serious manifestations, including gastroenteritis, wound infections, and septic shock. Previous studies suggest phylogenetic Lineage 1 isolates with the vcgC allele of the vcg gene cause human infections, whereas Lineage 2 isolates with the vcgE allele are less pathogenic. Mouse studies suggest that some variants of the primary toxin could drive more serious infections. A collection of 109 V. vulnificus United States human clinical isolates from 2001 to 2019 with paired clinical outcome data were assembled. The isolates underwent whole-genome sequencing, multilocus-sequence phylogenetic analysis, and toxinotype analysis of the multifunctional autoprocessing repeats-in-toxin (MARTX) toxin. In contrast to prior reports, clinical isolates were equally distributed between lineages. We found no correlation between phylogenetic lineage or MARTX toxinotype and disease severity. Infections caused by isolates in Lineage 1 demonstrated a borderline statistically significant higher mortality. Lineage 1 isolates had a trend toward a higher proportion of M-type MARTX toxins compared with Lineage 2, although this was not statistically significant.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | mBio |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2022 |
Funding
We thank the CDC for providing strains, with special thanks to Cheryl Tarr, Anna Newton, Erin Stokes, and Michael Hughes for providing COVIS data and pairing available clinical data with isolates. Thanks to Fiorella Krapp-Lopez and Katherine Murphy for assistance with sequencing library preparation. We thank the University of Maryland Institute for Genome Sciences and the Microbial Genome Sequencing Center (MiGS) for whole-genome sequencing services. We thank the BV-BRC, particularly Allan Dickerman, for genome assembly assistance and for use of resources at Patricbrc.org, which is funded by NIH Contract No. HHSN27220140027C to Rick Stevens of the University of Chicago. K.J.F.S. has a significant financial interest in Situ Biosciences, a contract research organization that conducts studies unrelated to this work. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest. This work was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award in Translational Research in Infectious Diseases T32A1095207 (to S.A.T.) and National Institutes of Health grants R01AI092825 and R01AI098369 (to K.J.F.S.). This work was publicly presented at the 19th Annual Microbial Sciences Symposium (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 30 April 2022) and the 1st Annual Pathogen Genomics Symposium (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, 4 May 2022). We thank the CDC for providing strains, with special thanks to Cheryl Tarr, Anna Newton, Erin Stokes, and Michael Hughes for providing COVIS data and pairing available clinical data with isolates. Thanks to Fiorella Krapp-Lopez and Katherine Murphy for assistance with sequencing library preparation. We thank the University of Maryland Institute for Genome Sciences and the Microbial Genome Sequencing Center (MiGS) for whole-genome sequencing services. We thank the BV-BRC, particularly Allan Dickerman, for genome assembly assistance and for use of resources at Patricbrc.org, which is funded by NIH Contract No. HHSN27220140027C to Rick Stevens of the University of Chicago. This work was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award in Translational Research in Infectious Diseases T32A1095207 (to S.A.T.) and National Institutes of Health grants R01AI092825 and R01AI098369 (to K.J.F.S.).
Keywords
- RTX toxins
- Vibrio vulnificus
- genome
- patient outcome
- phylogeny
- surveillance
- toxin
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Microbiology
- Virology
