Putatively novel serotypes and the potential for reduced vaccine effectiveness: capsular locus diversity revealed among 5405 pneumococcal genomes.

ABSTRACT: The pneumococcus is a leading global pathogen and a key virulence factor possessed by the majority of pneumococci is an antigenic polysaccharide capsule ('serotype'), which is encoded by the capsular (cps) locus. Approximately 100 different serotypes are known, but the extent of sequence diversity within the cps loci of individual serotypes is not well understood. Investigating serotype-specific sequence variation is crucial to the design of sequence-based serotyping methodology, understanding pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) effectiveness and the design of future PCVs. The availability of large genome datasets makes it possible to assess population-level variation among pneumococcal serotypes and in this study 5405 pneumococcal genomes were used to investigate cps

SUBMITTER: van Tonder AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5266551 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature