The rag locus of Porphyromonas gingivalis might arise from Bacteroides via horizontal gene transfer.
Porphyromonas gingivalis is regarded as one of the risk factors of periodontitis. P. gingivalis exhibits a wide variety of genotypes. Many insertion sequences (ISs), located in their chromosomes, made P. gingivalis differentiate into virulent and avirulent strains. In this research, we investigated the prevalence of P. gingivalis in the gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) among periodontitis patients from Zhenjiang, China, detected the P. gingivalis rag locus distributions by multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and analyzed the origin of the P. gingivalis rag locus based on evolution. There were three rag locus variants co-existing in Zhenjiang. The results showed that the rag locus may be associated with severe periodontitis. This work also firstly ascertained that the rag locus might arise, in theory, from Bacteroides sp. via horizontal gene transfer.
Su
Z
Z
Department of Immunology and Laboratory Immunology, Center of Medical Laboratory, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China.
Kong
F
F
Wang
S
S
Chen
J
J
Yin
R
R
Zhou
C
C
Zhang
Y
Y
He
Z
Z
Shi
Y
Y
Xue
Y
Y
Shi
X
X
Lu
L
L
Shao
Q
Q
Xu
H
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001439:Bacteroides / Q000235:genetics*; D002681:China; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005260:Female; D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010510:Periodontal Diseases / Q000382:microbiology*; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D016966:Porphyromonas gingivalis / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D055815:Young Adult
D004269:DNA, Bacterial