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Applied and Environmental Microbiology Jul 2023Oysters play an important role in coastal ecology and are a globally popular seafood source. However, their filter-feeding lifestyle enables coastal pathogens, toxins,...
Oysters play an important role in coastal ecology and are a globally popular seafood source. However, their filter-feeding lifestyle enables coastal pathogens, toxins, and pollutants to accumulate in their tissues, potentially endangering human health. While pathogen concentrations in coastal waters are often linked to environmental conditions and runoff events, these do not always correlate with pathogen concentrations in oysters. Additional factors related to the microbial ecology of pathogenic bacteria and their relationship with oyster hosts likely play a role in accumulation but are poorly understood. In this study, we investigated whether microbial communities in water and oysters were linked to accumulation of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio vulnificus, or fecal indicator bacteria. Site-specific environmental conditions significantly influenced microbial communities and potential pathogen concentrations in water. Oyster microbial communities, however, exhibited less variability in microbial community diversity and accumulation of target bacteria overall and were less impacted by environmental differences between sites. Instead, changes in specific microbial taxa in oyster and water samples, particularly in oyster digestive glands, were linked to elevated levels of potential pathogens. For example, increased levels of V. parahaemolyticus were associated with higher relative abundances of cyanobacteria, which could represent an environmental vector for spp. transport, and with decreased relative abundance of and other key members of the oyster digestive gland microbiota. These findings suggest that host and microbial factors, in addition to environmental variables, may influence pathogen accumulation in oysters. Bacteria in the marine environment cause thousands of human illnesses annually. Bivalves are a popular seafood source and are important in coastal ecology, but their ability to concentrate pathogens from the water can cause human illness, threatening seafood safety and security. To predict and prevent disease, it is critical to understand what causes pathogenic bacteria to accumulate in bivalves. In this study, we examined how environmental factors and host and water microbial communities were linked to potential human pathogen accumulation in oysters. Oyster microbial communities were more stable than water communities, and both contained the highest concentrations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus at sites with warmer temperatures and lower salinities. High oyster V. parahaemolyticus concentrations corresponded with abundant cyanobacteria, a potential vector for transmission, and a decrease in potentially beneficial oyster microbes. Our study suggests that poorly understood factors, including host and water microbiota, likely play a role in pathogen distribution and pathogen transmission.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Water; Ostreidae; Vibrio parahaemolyticus; Vibrio vulnificus; Bivalvia; Bacteria
PubMed: 37318344
DOI: 10.1128/aem.00318-23 -
PloS One 2023The current study determines the density of Vibrio spp. and isolates V. cholerae and Vibrio mimicus from fish-anatomical-sites, prawn, crab and mussel samples recovered...
Antibiotic resistance and virulence genes profiling of Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio mimicus isolates from some seafood collected at the aquatic environment and wet markets in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
The current study determines the density of Vibrio spp. and isolates V. cholerae and Vibrio mimicus from fish-anatomical-sites, prawn, crab and mussel samples recovered from fish markets, freshwater and brackish water. Virulence and antibiotic resistance profiling of isolates were carried out using standard molecular and microbiology techniques. Vibrio spp. was detected in more than 90% of samples [134/144] and its density was significantly more in fish than in other samples. Vibrio. cholerae and V. mimicus were isolated in at least one sample of each sample type with higher isolation frequency in fish samples. All the V. cholerae isolates belong to non-O1/non-O139 serogroup. One or more V. cholerae isolates exhibited intermediate or resistance against each of the eighteen panels of antibiotics used but 100% of the V. mimicus were susceptible to amikacin, gentamycin and chloramphenicol. Vibrio cholerae exhibited relatively high resistance against polymyxin, ampicillin and amoxicillin/clavulanate while V. mimicus isolates exhibited relatively high resistance against nitrofurantoin, ampicillin and polymixin. The multiple-antibiotic-resistance-index [MARI] for isolates ranges between 0 and 0.67 and 48% of the isolates have MARI that is >0.2 while 55% of the isolates exhibit MultiDrug Resistance Phenotypes. The percentage detection of acc, ant, drf18, sul1, mcr-1, blasvh, blaoxa, blatem, blaoxa48, gyrA, gyrB and parC resistance-associated genes were 2%, 9%, 14%, 7%, 2%, 25%, 7%, 2%, 2%, 32%, 25% and 27% respectively while that for virulence-associated genes in increasing other was ace [2%], tcp [11%], vpi [16%], ompU [34%], toxR [43%], rtxC [70%], rtxA [73%] and hyla [77%]. The study confirmed the potential of environmental non-O1/non-O139 V. cholerae and V. mimicus to cause cholera-like infection and other vibriosis which could be difficult to manage with commonly recommended antibiotics. Thus, regular monitoring of the environment to create necessary awareness for this kind of pathogens is important in the interest of public health.
Topics: Animals; Vibrio cholerae; Vibrio mimicus; South Africa; Virulence; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Ampicillin; Polymyxins; Drug Resistance, Microbial
PubMed: 37616193
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290356 -
MBio Oct 2023To counteract infection with phage, bacteria have evolved a myriad of molecular defense systems. Some of these systems initiate a process called abortive infection, in...
To counteract infection with phage, bacteria have evolved a myriad of molecular defense systems. Some of these systems initiate a process called abortive infection, in which the infected cell kills itself to prevent phage propagation. However, such systems must be inhibited in the absence of phage infection to prevent spurious death of the host. Here, we show that the cyclic oligonucleotide based anti-phage signaling system (CBASS) accomplishes this by sensing intracellular folate molecules and only expressing this system in a group. These results enhance our understanding of the evolution of the seventh pandemic and more broadly how bacteria defend themselves against phage infection.
Topics: Vibrio cholerae; Quorum Sensing; Bacteriophages; Signal Transduction
PubMed: 37623317
DOI: 10.1128/mbio.00875-23 -
Emerging Infectious Diseases Oct 2023The 2010 cholera epidemic in Haiti was thought to have ended in 2019, and the Prime Minister of Haiti declared the country cholera-free in February 2022. On September...
The 2010 cholera epidemic in Haiti was thought to have ended in 2019, and the Prime Minister of Haiti declared the country cholera-free in February 2022. On September 25, 2022, cholera cases were again identified in Port-au-Prince. We compared genomic data from 42 clinical Vibrio cholerae strains from 2022 with data from 327 other strains from Haiti and 1,824 strains collected worldwide. The 2022 isolates were homogeneous and closely related to clinical and environmental strains circulating in Haiti during 2012-2019. Bayesian hypothesis testing indicated that the 2022 clinical isolates shared their most recent common ancestor with an environmental lineage circulating in Haiti in July 2018. Our findings strongly suggest that toxigenic V. cholerae O1 can persist for years in aquatic environmental reservoirs and ignite new outbreaks. These results highlight the urgent need for improved public health infrastructure and possible periodic vaccination campaigns to maintain population immunity against V. cholerae.
Topics: Humans; Vibrio cholerae; Haiti; Bayes Theorem; Cholera; Disease Outbreaks
PubMed: 37735743
DOI: 10.3201/eid2910.230554 -
International Journal of Food... Jun 2024The presence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus (Vp) in different production stages of seafood has generated negative impacts on both public health and the sustainability of the... (Review)
Review
The presence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus (Vp) in different production stages of seafood has generated negative impacts on both public health and the sustainability of the industry. To further better investigate the fitness of Vp at the phenotypical level, a great number of studies have been conducted in recent years using plate counting methods. In the meantime, with the increasing accessibility of the next generation sequencing and the advances in analytical chemistry techniques, omics-oriented biotechnologies have further advanced our knowledge in the survival and virulence mechanisms of Vp at various molecular levels. These observations provide insights to guide the development of novel prevention and control strategies and benefit the monitoring and mitigation of food safety risks associated with Vp contamination. To timely capture these recent advances, this review firstly summarizes the most recent phenotypical level studies and provide insights about the survival of Vp under important in vitro stresses and on aquatic products. After that, molecular survival mechanisms of Vp at transcriptomic and proteomic levels are summarized and discussed. Looking forward, other newer omics-biotechnology such as metabolomics and secretomics show great potential to be used for confirming the cellular responses of Vp. Powerful data mining tools from the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence, that can better utilize the omics data and solve complex problems in the processing, analysis, and interpretation of omics data, will further improve our mechanistic understanding of Vp.
Topics: Vibrio parahaemolyticus; Seafood; Proteomics; Virulence; Food Microbiology; Humans; Transcriptome; Animals
PubMed: 38631283
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2024.110691 -
Cell Host & Microbe May 2024Many, if not all, bacteria use quorum sensing (QS) to control collective behaviors, and more recently, QS has also been discovered in bacteriophages (phages). Phages can...
Many, if not all, bacteria use quorum sensing (QS) to control collective behaviors, and more recently, QS has also been discovered in bacteriophages (phages). Phages can produce communication molecules of their own, or "listen in" on the host's communication processes, to switch between lytic and lysogenic modes of infection. Here, we study the interaction of Vibrio cholerae with the lysogenic phage VP882, which is activated by the QS molecule DPO. We discover that induction of VP882 results in the binding of phage transcripts to the major RNA chaperone Hfq, which in turn outcompetes and downregulates host-encoded small RNAs (sRNAs). VP882 itself also encodes Hfq-binding sRNAs, and we demonstrate that one of these sRNAs, named VpdS, promotes phage replication by regulating host and phage mRNA levels. We further show that host-encoded sRNAs can antagonize phage replication by downregulating phage mRNA expression and thus might be part of the host's phage defense arsenal.
Topics: Vibrio cholerae; Quorum Sensing; Bacteriophages; Host Factor 1 Protein; Virus Replication; Lysogeny; RNA, Viral; RNA, Small Untranslated; Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; RNA, Bacterial; RNA, Messenger; Host Microbial Interactions
PubMed: 38579715
DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2024.03.010 -
International Journal of Molecular... Aug 2023is an intestinal pathogen that can cause severe diarrheal disease. The disease has afflicted millions of people since the 19th century and has aroused global concern....
is an intestinal pathogen that can cause severe diarrheal disease. The disease has afflicted millions of people since the 19th century and has aroused global concern. The Pathogenicity Island-2 (VPI-2) is a 57.3 kb region, -, which is present in choleragenic . At present, little is known about the function of VC1795 in the VPI-2 of . In this study, the intestinal colonization ability of the Δ strain was significantly reduced compared to that of the wild-type strain, and the colonization ability was restored to the wild-type strain after gene replacement. This result indicated that the gene plays a key role in the intestinal colonization and pathogenicity of . Then, we explored the upstream and downstream regulation mechanisms of the gene. Cyclic adenylate receptor protein (CRP) was identified as being located upstream of by a DNA pull-down assay and electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) and negatively regulating the expression of . In addition, the results of Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP-seq), EMSAs, and Quantitative Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR) indicated that VC1795 directly negatively regulates the expression of its downstream gene, . Furthermore, by using qRT-PCR, we hypothesized that VC1795 indirectly positively regulates the toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP) cluster to influence the colonization ability of in intestinal tracts. In short, our findings support the key regulatory role of VC1795 in bacterial pathogenesis as well as lay the groundwork for the further determination of the complex regulatory network of VC1795 in bacteria.
Topics: Humans; Vibrio cholerae; Genomic Islands; Vibrio; Intestines; Biological Assay
PubMed: 37686329
DOI: 10.3390/ijms241713523 -
International Journal of Molecular... Nov 2023Bacterial diseases caused by spp. are prevalent in aquaculture and can lead to high mortality rates among aquatic species and significant economic losses. With the...
Bacterial diseases caused by spp. are prevalent in aquaculture and can lead to high mortality rates among aquatic species and significant economic losses. With the increasing emergence of multidrug-resistant strains, phage therapy is being explored as a potential alternative to antibiotics for biocontrol of infectious diseases. Here, a new lytic phage named vB_VhaS_R21Y (R21Y) was isolated against BVH1 obtained from seawater from a scallop-farming area in Rongcheng, China. Its morphology, infection cycle, lytic profile, phage stability, and genetic features were characterized. Transmission electronic microscopy indicated that R21Y is siphovirus-like, comprising an icosahedral head (diameter 73.31 ± 2.09 nm) and long noncontractile tail (205.55 ± 0.75 nm). In a one-step growth experiment, R21Y had a 40-min latent period and a burst size of 35 phage particles per infected cell. R21Y was highly species-specific in the host range test and was relatively stable at pH 4-10 and 4-55 °C. Genomic analysis showed that R21Y is a double-stranded DNA virus with a genome size of 82,795 bp and GC content of 47.48%. Its high tolerance and lytic activity indicated that R21Y may be a candidate for phage therapy in controlling vibriosis in aquacultural systems.
Topics: Humans; Vibrio; Bacteriophages; Vibrio Infections; Genomics; Genome, Viral
PubMed: 38003392
DOI: 10.3390/ijms242216202 -
Scientific Reports Sep 2023Vibrio species can cause foodborne infections and lead to serious gastrointestinal illnesses. The purpose of this research was to detect the Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio...
Vibrio species can cause foodborne infections and lead to serious gastrointestinal illnesses. The purpose of this research was to detect the Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in raw milk, dairy products, and water samples. Also, it investigated the virulence factors, antibiotic resistance and biofilm formation in isolated bacteria. Conventional and molecular approaches were used to identify the isolates in this study. Vibrio species were detected in 5% of the samples. Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus were isolated from 1.25 and 1.5%, respectively, of the total samples. Penicillin resistance was detected in all strains of Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus, with a MAR index ranging from 0.16 to 0.5. Four isolates were moderate biofilm producer and three of them were MDR. When Vibrio cholerae was screened for virulence genes, ctxAB, hlyA, and tcpA were found in 80, 60, and 80% of isolates, respectively. However, tdh + /trh + associated-virulence genes were found in 33.3% of Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolates.
Topics: Vibrio cholerae; Vibrio parahaemolyticus; Biofilms; Cell Aggregation; Water
PubMed: 37717062
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42334-4 -
PLoS Medicine Sep 2023Cholera surveillance relies on clinical diagnosis of acute watery diarrhea. Suspected cholera case definitions have high sensitivity but low specificity, challenging our... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
BACKGROUND
Cholera surveillance relies on clinical diagnosis of acute watery diarrhea. Suspected cholera case definitions have high sensitivity but low specificity, challenging our ability to characterize cholera burden and epidemiology. Our objective was to estimate the proportion of clinically suspected cholera that are true Vibrio cholerae infections and identify factors that explain variation in positivity.
METHODS AND FINDINGS
We conducted a systematic review of studies that tested ≥10 suspected cholera cases for V. cholerae O1/O139 using culture, PCR, and/or a rapid diagnostic test. We searched PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Google Scholar for studies that sampled at least one suspected case between January 1, 2000 and April 19, 2023, to reflect contemporary patterns in V. cholerae positivity. We estimated diagnostic test sensitivity and specificity using a latent class meta-analysis. We estimated V. cholerae positivity using a random-effects meta-analysis, adjusting for test performance. We included 119 studies from 30 countries. V. cholerae positivity was lower in studies with representative sampling and in studies that set minimum ages in suspected case definitions. After adjusting for test performance, on average, 52% (95% credible interval (CrI): 24%, 80%) of suspected cases represented true V. cholerae infections. After adjusting for test performance and study methodology, the odds of a suspected case having a true infection were 5.71 (odds ratio 95% CrI: 1.53, 15.43) times higher when surveillance was initiated in response to an outbreak than in non-outbreak settings. Variation across studies was high, and a limitation of our approach was that we were unable to explain all the heterogeneity with study-level attributes, including diagnostic test used, setting, and case definitions.
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we found that burden estimates based on suspected cases alone may overestimate the incidence of medically attended cholera by 2-fold. However, accounting for cases missed by traditional clinical surveillance is key to unbiased cholera burden estimates. Given the substantial variability in positivity between settings, extrapolations from suspected to confirmed cases, which is necessary to estimate cholera incidence rates without exhaustive testing, should be based on local data.
Topics: Humans; Cholera; Vibrio cholerae; Disease Outbreaks; Diarrhea; Polymerase Chain Reaction
PubMed: 37708235
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004286