title: In vitro transcriptome analysis of two Chinese isolates of Streptococcus suis serotype 2.
abstract: The Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (S. suis 2) isolates 05ZYH33 and 98HAH33 have caused severe human infections in China. Using a strand-specific RNA-seq analysis, we compared the in vitro transcriptomes of these two Chinese isolates with that of a reference strain (P1/7). In the 89K genomic island that is specific to these Chinese isolates, a toxin-antitoxin system showed relatively high levels of transcription among the S. suis. The known virulence factors with high transcriptional activity in these two highly-pathogenic strains are mainly involved in adhesion, biofilm formation, hemolysis and the synthesis and transport of the outer membrane protein. Furthermore, our analysis of novel transcripts identified over 50 protein-coding genes with one of them encoding a toxin protein. We also predicted over 30 small RNAs (sRNAs) in each strain, and most of them are involved in riboswitches. We found that six sRNA candidates that are related to bacterial virulence, including cspA and rli38, are specific to Chinese isolates. These results provide insight into the factors responsible for the difference in virulence among the different S. suis 2 isolates.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Dake
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Sufang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Qingtao
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Guangwen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: czeng@big.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Changqing
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D065288:Serogroup; D013290:Streptococcal Infections / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology / Q000382:microbiology; D017011:Streptococcus suis / Q000235:genetics*; D014774:Virulence; D037521:Virulence Factors / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D037521:Virulence Factors
keywords: Novel transcripts; Streptococcus suis serotype 2; Transcriptome; Virulence factor; sRNA