showing 26 related works from this author
Local adaptation in populations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis endemic to the Indian Ocean Rim
2021
24 páginas, 3 figuras, 1 tabla. The sequence data generated by this study has been deposited on SRA (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) under the accession number PRJNA670836. Extended data is available here: https://github.com/fmenardo/MTBC_L1_L3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4609804 (Menardo, 2021).
Genetic similarity of hepatitis C virus and fibrosis progression in chronic and recurrent infection after liver transplantation
2006
SUMMARY. The effect of hepatitis C virus (HCV) genetic heterogeneity on clinical features of post-transplantation hepatitis C is controversial. Different regions of the HCV genome have been associated with apoptosis, fibrosis, and other pathways leading to liver damage in chronic HCV infection. Besides, differences in immunodominant regions, such as NS3, may influence HCV-specific immune responses and disease outcome. In the liver transplant setting, a recent study has reported a positive association between HCV-1b Core region genetic relatedness 5-year post-transplantation and histological severity of recurrent hepatitis C. We have compared nucleotide sequences of HCV Core, NS3 and NS5b re…
Legionellosis Outbreak Associated with Asphalt Paving Machine, Spain, 2009
2010
From 1999 through 2005 in Alcoi, Spain, incidence of legionellosis was continually high. Over the next 4 years, incidence was lower, but an increase in July 2009 led health authorities to declare an epidemic outbreak. A molecular epidemiology investigation showed that the allelic profiles for all Legionella pneumophila samples from the 2009 outbreak patients were the same, thus pointing to a common genetic origin for their infections, and that they were identical to that of the organism that had caused the previous outbreaks. Spatial-temporal and sequence-based typing analyses indicated a milling machine used in street asphalt repaving and its water tank as the most likely sources. As oppos…
A New Method for Extracting Skin Microbes Allows Metagenomic Analysis of Whole-Deep Skin
2013
In the last decade, an extensive effort has been made to characterize the human microbiota, due to its clinical and economic interests. However, a metagenomic approach to the skin microbiota is hampered by the high proportion of host DNA that is recovered. In contrast with the burgeoning field of gut metagenomics, skin metagenomics has been hindered by the absence of an efficient method to avoid sequencing the host DNA. We present here a method for recovering microbial DNA from skin samples, based on a combination of molecular techniques. We have applied this method to mouse skin, and have validated it by standard, quantitative PCR and amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA. The taxonomic diversit…
Genetic Characterization of Legionella pneumophila Isolated from a Common Watershed in Comunidad Valenciana, Spain
2013
Legionella pneumophila infects humans to produce legionellosis and Pontiac fever only from environmental sources. In order to establish control measures and study the sources of outbreaks it is essential to know extent and distribution of strain variants of this bacterium in the environment. Sporadic and outbreak-related cases of legionellosis have been historically frequent in the Comunidad Valenciana region (CV, Spain), with a high prevalence in its Southeastern-most part (BV). Environmental investigations for the detection of Legionella pneumophila are performed in this area routinely. We present a population genetics study of 87 L. pneumophila strains isolated in 13 different localities…
Low sensitivity of the MPT64 identification test to detect lineage 5 of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex
2018
Abstract: Purpose. Differentiation of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBc) from non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) is important for tuberculosis diagnosis and is a prerequisite for reliable phenotypic drug-resistance testing. We evaluated the performance of the rapid MPT64 antigen identification test for the detection of Mycobacterium africanum lineage 5 (MAF L5). Methodology. Smear-positive tuberculosis patients' sputa were included prospectively. Culture was performed on Lowenstein-Jensen medium and, when positive, the MPT64 test and the classical para-nitro benzoic acid susceptibility and heat-labile catalase (PNB/catalase) identification tests were performed. The MPT64 test was…
A New Phylogenetic Framework for the Animal-adaptedMycobacterium tuberculosisComplex
2018
Tuberculosis (TB) affects humans and other animals and is caused by bacteria from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Previous studies have shown that there are at least nine members of the MTBC infecting animals other than humans; these have also been referred to as ecotypes. However, the ecology and the evolution of these animal-adapted MTBC ecotypes are poorly understood. Here we screened 12,886 publicly available MTBC genomes and newly sequenced 17 animal-adapted MTBC strains, gathering a total of 529 genomes of animal-adapted MTBC strains. Phylogenomic and comparative analyses confirm that the animal-adapted MTBC members are paraphyletic with some members more closely relate…
Sequence diversity in the pe_pgrs genes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is independent of human T cell recognition.
2014
ABSTRACT The Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome includes the large family of pe_pgrs genes, whose functions are unknown. Because of precedents in other pathogens in which gene families showing high sequence variation are involved in antigenic variation, a similar role has been proposed for the pe_pgrs genes. However, the impact of immune selection on pe_pgrs genes has not been examined. Here, we sequenced 27 pe_pgrs genes in 94 clinical strains from five phylogenetic lineages of the M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC). We found that pe_pgrs genes were overall more diverse than the remainder of the MTBC genome, but individual members of the family varied widely in their nucleotide diversity and in…
Mycobacterium tuberculosiscomplex lineage 5 exhibits high levels of within-lineage genomic diversity and differing gene content compared to the type …
2020
AbstractPathogens of theMycobacterium tuberculosiscomplex (MTBC) are considered monomorphic, with little gene content variation between strains. Nevertheless, several genotypic and phenotypic factors separate the different MTBC lineages (L), especially L5 and L6 (traditionally termedMycobacterium africanum), from each other. However, genome variability and gene content especially of L5 and L6 strains have not been fully explored and may be potentially important for pathobiology and current approaches for genomic analysis of MTBC isolates, including transmission studies.We compared the genomes of 358 L5 clinical isolates (including 3 completed genomes and 355 Illumina WGS (whole genome seque…
Geographical and temporal structures of Legionella pneumophila sequence types in comunitat valenciana (Spain), 1998 to 2013
2015
ABSTRACT Legionella pneumophila is an accidental human pathogen associated with aerosol formation in water-related sources. High recombination rates make Legionella populations genetically diverse, and nearly 2,000 different sequence types (STs) have been described to date for this environmental pathogen. The spatial distribution of STs is extremely heterogeneous, with some variants being present worldwide and others being detected at only a local scale. Similarly, some STs have been associated with disease outbreaks, such as ST578 or ST23. Spain is among the European countries with the highest incidences of reported legionellosis cases, and specifically, Comunitat Valenciana (CV) is the se…
Evolutionary and phenotypic characterization of spike mutations in a new SARS-CoV-2 Lineage reveals two Variants of Interest
2021
Molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 aims to monitor the appearance of new variants with the potential to change the virulence or transmissibility of the virus. During the first year of SARS-CoV-2 evolution, numerous variants with possible public health impact have emerged. We have detected two mutations in the Spike protein at amino acid positions 1163 and 1167 that have appeared independently multiple times in different genetic backgrounds, indicating they may increase viral fitness. Interestingly, the majority of these sequences appear in transmission clusters, with the genotype encoding mutations at both positions increasing in frequency more than single-site mutants. This genetic outco…
Quantifying transmission fitness costs of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
2021
As multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) continues to spread, investigating the transmission potential of different drug-resistant strains becomes an ever more pressing topic in public health. While phylogenetic and transmission tree inferences provide valuable insight into possible transmission chains, phylodynamic inference combines evolutionary and epidemiological analyses to estimate the parameters of the underlying epidemiological processes, allowing us to describe the overall dynamics of disease spread in the population. In this study, we introduce an approach to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) phylodynamic analysis employing an existing computationally efficient mod…
Mixed infection by Legionella pneumophila in outbreak patients.
2013
During the molecular epidemiological study of a legionellosis outbreak, we obtained sequence based typing (SBT) profiles from uncultured respiratory samples of 15 affected patients. We detected several distinct allelic profiles some of which were a mixture of alleles present in the more common profiles. Chromatograms from the sequences of one patient with mixed profile showed polymorphisms in several positions, which could result from the simultaneous presence of different Legionella variants in the sample. In order to test this possibility, we cloned PCR amplification products from six loci for two patients with a mixed profile and a patient with a pure profile. After obtaining around 20 s…
Direct sequencing of Legionella pneumophila from respiratory samples for sequence-based typing analysis.
2009
ABSTRACT We have developed a procedure to test the efficiency and reliability of sequencing of Legionella pneumophila genes directly from respiratory samples and have compared the results with those derived from cultured isolates. We tried to obtain the nucleotide sequences of six protein-coding loci included in the sequence-based typing scheme for Legionella pneumophila and three intergenic regions from 132 samples corresponding to 106 patients positive for urine antigen. A seminested PCR approach was used to amplify and sequence these nine loci directly from respiratory samples. Nucleotide sequences were directly obtained for 23 Legionella isolates and also for 66 respiratory secretions f…
Persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection with repeated clinical recurrence in a patient with common variable immunodeficiency
2021
This work was co-financed by the European Union through the Operational Programme of the European Regional Development Fund of Valencia Region (Spain) 2014–2020.
Phylogenomics of Mycobacterium africanum reveals a new lineage and a complex evolutionary history.
2021
Coscolla et al.
In silico exploration of Mycobacterium tuberculosis metabolic networks shows host-associated convergent fluxomic phenotypes
2022
This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Approaches for the Study of Biomolecular Networks
Staphylococcus prevails in the skin microbiota of long-term immunodeficient mice
2012
Summary Host-commensal relationships in the skin are a complex system governed by variables related to the host, the bacteria and the environment. A disruption of this system may lead to new steady states, which, in turn, may lead to disease. We have studied one such disruption by characterizing the skin micro- biota in healthy and immunodepressed (ID) mice. A detailed anatomopathological study failed to reveal any difference between the skin of healthy and ID mice. We sequenced the 16S rDNA V1-V2 gene region to saturation in 10 healthy and 10 ID 8 week- old mice, and found than all of the healthy and two of the ID mice had bacterial communities that were similar in composition to that of h…
Reference set of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical strains: A tool for research and product development
2018
TheMycobacterium tuberculosiscomplex (MTBC) causes tuberculosis (TB) in humans and various other mammals. The human-adapted members of the MTBC comprise seven phylogenetic lineages that differ in their geographical distribution. There is growing evidence that this phylogenetic diversity modulates the outcome of TB infection and disease. For decades, TB research and development has focused on the two canonical MTBC reference strains H37Rv and Erdman, both of which belong to Lineage 4. Relying on only a few laboratory-adapted strains can be misleading as study results might not be directly transferrable to clinical settings where patients are infected with a diverse array of strains, includin…
Population structure and recombination in environmental isolates of Legionella pneumophila
2007
Legionella pneumophila is a water-borne bacteria responsible for most cases of legionellosis, an emerging disease with an increasing incidence in industrialized countries. Although early analysis based on multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE) described the population structure of this species as clonal, more recent reports have suggested that recombination also contributes to shaping variation across its genome. We report here the results of analysing the nucleotide sequences of 19 loci in 31 environmental samples of L. pneumophila from a small Spanish region (near Alcoi, province of Alicante) where legionellosis has become almost endemic. We analysed the six loci currently incorporated …
Genetic variability in environmental isolates of Legionella pneumophila from Comunidad Valenciana (Spain).
2006
Summary Legionella pneumophila is associated to recurrent outbreaks in several Comunidad Valenciana (Spain) localities, especially in Alcoi, where social and climatic conditions seem to provide an excellent environment for bacterial growth. We have analysed the nucleotide sequences of three loci from 25 environmental isolates from Alcoi and nearby locations sampled over 3 years. The analysis of these isolates has revealed a substan- tial level of genetic variation, with consistent patterns of variability across loci, and comparable to that found in a large, European-wide sampling of clinical isolates. Among the tree loci studied, fliC showed the highest level of nucleotide diversity. The an…
Molecular epidemiology and whole genome sequencing analysis of clinical Mycobacterium bovis from Ghana
2019
[Background]: Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) caused by Mycobacterium bovis is a re-emerging problem in both livestock and humans. The association of some M. bovis strains with hyper-virulence, MDR-TB and disseminated disease makes it imperative to understand the biology of the pathogen.
Comparison of clinical and environmental samples of Legionella pneumophila at the nucleotide sequence level
2009
Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 is the most common etiological agent of legionellosis. We have used clinical and environmental isolates from different sources to compare their genetic variability. We have obtained the nucleotide sequence for six protein-coding loci, included in the SBT scheme for L. pneumophila, and three intergenic regions from 127 samples, 47 of environmental origin and 80 from clinical samples. Levels of genetic variability were found to be higher in the environmental than in the clinical samples, but these did not represent a mere subset of the former. Not a single case of full identity between clinical and environmental isolates was found, which raises the possibili…
The first wave of the Spanish COVID-19 epidemic was associated with early introductions and fast spread of a dominating genetic variant
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world since the beginning of 2020. Spain is among the European countries with the highest incidence of the disease during the first pandemic wave. We established a multidisciplinar consortium to monitor and study the evolution of the epidemic, with the aim of contributing to decision making and stopping rapid spreading across the country. We present the results for 2170 sequences from the first wave of the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic in Spain and representing 12% of diagnosed cases until 14th March. This effort allows us to document at least 500 initial introductions, between early February-March from multiple international sources. Importantly, we document the …
Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex lineage 5 exhibits high levels of within-lineage genomic diversity and differing gene content compared to the type…
2021
Pathogens of theMycobacterium tuberculosiscomplex (MTBC) are considered to be monomorphic, with little gene content variation between strains. Nevertheless, several genotypic and phenotypic factors separate strains of the different MTBC lineages (L), especially L5 and L6 (traditionally termedMycobacterium africanum) strains, from each other. However, this genome variability and gene content, especially of L5 strains, has not been fully explored and may be important for pathobiology and current approaches for genomic analysis of MTBC strains, including transmission studies. By comparing the genomes of 355 L5 clinical strains (including 3 complete genomes and 352 Illumina whole-genome sequenc…
Local adaptation in populations ofMycobacterium tuberculosisendemic to the Indian Ocean Rim
2020
AbstractLineage 1 (L1) and 3 (L3) are two lineages of theMycobacterium tuberculosiscomplex (MTBC), causing tuberculosis (TB) in humans. L1 and L3 are endemic to the Rim of the Indian Ocean, the region that accounts for most of the world’s new TB cases. Despite their relevance for this region, L1 and L3 remain understudied. Here we analyzed 2,938 L1 and 2,030 L3 whole genome sequences originating from 69 countries. We show that South Asia played a central role in the dispersion of these two lineages to neighboring regions. Moreover, we found that L1 exhibits signatures of local adaptation at theesxHlocus, a gene coding for a secreted effector that targets the human endosomal sorting complex,…