Diversity of Clinical and Environmental Isolates of Vibrio cholerae in Natural Transformation and Contact-Dependent Bacterial Killing Indicative of Type VI Secretion System Activity.

ABSTRACT: The bacterial pathogen Vibrio cholerae can occupy both the human gut and aquatic reservoirs, where it may colonize chitinous surfaces that induce the expression of factors for three phenotypes: chitin utilization, DNA uptake by natural transformation, and contact-dependent bacterial killing via a type VI secretion system (T6SS). In this study, we surveyed a diverse set of 53 isolates from different geographic locales collected over the past century from human clinical and environmental specimens for each phenotype outlined above. The set included pandemic isolates of serogroup O1, as well as several serogroup O139 and non-O1/non-O139 strains. We found that while chitin utilization was common, only 22.6% of the isolates tested were proficient at chitin-induced natural transformation, sugges

SUBMITTER: Bernardy EE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4836410 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature