Abstract
Shigellosis is a highly infectious disease that is mainly transmitted via fecal-oral contact of the bacteria Shigella. Four species have been identified in Shigella genus, among which Shigella flexneri is used to be the most prevalent species globally and commonly isolated from developing countries. However, it is being replaced by Shigella sonnei that is currently the main causative agent for dysentery pandemic in many emerging industrialized countries such as Asia and the Middle East. For a better understanding of S. sonnei virulence and antibiotic resistance, we sequenced 12 clinical S. sonnei strains with varied antibiotic-resistance profiles collected from four cities in Jiangsu Province, China. Phylogenomic analysis clustered antibiotic-sensitive and resistant S. sonnei into two distinct groups while pan-genome analysis reveals the presence and absence of unique genes in each group. Screening of 31 classes of virulence factors found out that type 2 secretion system is doubled in resistant strains. Further principle component analysis based on the interactions between virulence and resistance indicated that abundant virulence factors are associated with higher levels of antibiotic resistance. The result present here is based on statistical analysis of a small sample size and serves basically as a guidance for further experimental and theoretical studies.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81902040, 81871734, 81701390, 81471994, 31900022), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20170250, BK20180997), Jiangsu Provincial Medical Talent (ZDRCA2016053), Six Talent Peaks Project of Jiangsu Province (WSN-135), Advanced Health Talent of Six-One Project of Jiangsu Province (LGY2016042), Jiangsu Provincial Commission of Health and Family Planning Research Project (H201631), Open Project from the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Drug Research and Clinical Pharmacy (No. KFXY201905), Xuzhou Science and Technology Innovation Project (KC19057), Young Science and Technology Innovation Team of Xuzhou Medical University (2020), and Jiangsu Qinglan Project (2020).
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BG, ZZ, and LW conceived the core ideas and wrote the manuscript. LW did data analysis and visualization. HQ, FG, YL, HZ, and YC did sample collection, bacterial culture, and genome sequencing. JS, PM, and CB revised the manuscript critically. BG, ZZ, and LW provided platforms and resources. All the authors approved the publication of the manuscript.
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The study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University (XYFY2015 JS005-01).
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All study participants were above the legal age of consent at the time of participation, and written informed consent was obtained from all volunteers prior to participation in the study. Sincere thanks to the participants of this study for their time and involvement.
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The manuscript is available online in BioRxiv as a preprint https://doi.org/10.1101/544387.
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Supplementary Figure 1
Pan-genome analysis of 12 clinically isolated Shigella sonnei strains with different antibiotic resistant profiles. (DOCX 43 kb)
Supplementary Table 1
Distribution patterns of 4 categories of virulence factors that belong to 31 groups among 12 Shigella sonnei strains in terms of antibiotic resistance (DOCX 21 kb)
Supplementary Table 2
The complete list of gene absence and presence among the 12 Shigella sonnei strains. (XLSX 872 kb)
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Zhu, Z., Wang, L., Qian, H. et al. Comparative genome analysis of 12 Shigella sonnei strains: virulence, resistance, and their interactions. Int Microbiol 24, 83–91 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-020-00145-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-020-00145-x