Expanding the repertoire of conservative site-specific recombination in Clostridioides difficile.

ABSTRACT: Recent genomic analysis of an epidemic ribotype 027 (RT027) Clostridioides difficile strain revealed the presence of several chromosomal site-specific invertible sites hypothesized to control the expression of adjacent genes in a bimodal on-off mode. This process, named phase variation, is thought to enhance phenotypic variability under homogeneous conditions ultimately increasing population fitness in unpredictable environmental fluctuations. The full extent of phase variation mediated by DNA-inversions in C. difficile is currently unknown. Here, we sought to expand our previous analysis by screening for site-specific inversions in isolates that belong to the rapidly emerging ribotypes RT017 and RT078. We report the finding of one novel inversion site for which we demonstrate the inversio

SUBMITTER: Sekulovic O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6917912 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature