ena-STUDY-SEOUL NAT'L UNIV.-21-10-2018-01:33:23:385-181
Comparative genomic analysis of 2016 Vibrio cholerae outbreak in South Korea.
In August 2016, Korea experienced a cholera outbreak that caused three people with acute watery diarrhea. It was the first time in 15 years that local Korean citizens have infected with Vibrio cholerae without having traveled overseas. To track down the cause and find the epidemiological relevance of this outbreak, we sequenced the whole genomes of V. cholerae isolates, three from the different patients and one from a seawater sample. The comparative genomic analysis has shown that the genome sequences of three patients and seawater isolate are highly similar and form a monophyletic clade with V. cholerae strains that have caused an outbreak in the Philippines in 2011. The Korean and Philippines outbreak strains have almost identical gene contents in which two unique genomic islands were shared. We confirmed that seawater is the likely source of this outbreak, which strongly suggests the necessity of routine surveillance over seashore of South Korea in the future.
In August 2016, Korea experienced a cholera outbreak that caused three people with acute watery diarrhea. It was the first time in 15 years that local Korean citizens have infected with Vibrio cholerae without having traveled overseas. To track down the cause and find the epidemiological relevance of this outbreak, we sequenced the whole genomes of V. cholerae isolates, three from the different patients and one from a seawater sample. The comparative genomic analysis has shown that the genome sequences of three patients and seawater isolate are highly similar and form a monophyletic clade with V. cholerae strains that have caused an outbreak in the Philippines in 2011. The Korean and Philippines outbreak strains have almost identical gene contents in which two unique genomic islands were shared. We confirmed that seawater is the likely source of this outbreak, which strongly suggests the necessity of routine surveillance over seashore of South Korea in the future.