Precise dissection of an Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak by single nucleotide polymorphism analysis.
The current pathogen-typing methods have suboptimal sensitivities and specificities. DNA sequencing offers an opportunity to type pathogens with greater degrees of discrimination using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) than with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and other methodologies. In a recent cluster of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections attributed to salad bar exposures and romaine lettuce, a subset of cases denied exposure to either source, although PFGE and multiple-locus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA) suggested that all isolates had the same recent progenitor. Interrogation of a preselected set of 3,442,673 nucleotides in backbone open reading frames (ORFs) identified only 1 or 2 single nucleotide differences in 3 of 12 isolates from the cases who denied exposure. The backbone DNAs of 9 of 9 and 3 of 3 cases who reported or were unsure about exposure, respectively, were isogenic. Backbone ORF SNP set sequencing offers pathogen differentiation capabilities that exceed those of PFGE and MLVA.
Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
George
G
Turabelidze
Steven J
SJ
Lawrence
Hongyu
H
Gao
Erica
E
Sodergren
George M
GM
Weinstock
Sahar
S
Abubucker
Todd
T
Wylie
Makedonka
M
Mitreva
Nurmohammad
N
Shaikh
Romesh
R
Gautom
Phillip I
PI
Tarr
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004927:Escherichia coli Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D019453:Escherichia coli O157 / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D058889:Molecular Typing / Q000379:methods*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D055815:Young Adult