Genomic and proteomic characterization of two strains of Shigella flexneri 2 isolated from infants’ stool in Argentina

MÓNICA F. TORREZ LAMBERTI; LUCRECIA C. TERÁN; FABIAN E. LOPEZ; MARÍA DE LAS MERCEDES PESCARETTI; MONICA A. DELGADO

BMC GENOMICS

BIOMED CENTRAL LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2022

1471-2164

This study was carried out in order to analyze the genome as well as the proteomic component of two clinical isolates of Shigella flexneri 2a, obtained in the obtained in the Northwest region of Argentina (NWA) in 2 periods, with four years of difference. Our goal was to determine putative changes at molecular levels occurred during this four years, that could explain the presence of this Shigella`s serovar as the prevalent pathogen in the population under study. As previously reported, our findings support the idea that Shigella has a conserved core genome, since comparative studies of CI133 and CI172 genomes performed against 80 genomes taken from the NCBI database, showed that there is a large number of genes shared among all of them. However, we observed that CI133 and CI172 harbors a small amount of strain-specific genes, several of them present in mobile genetic elements, supporting the hypothesis that these isolates were established in the population by the horizontal acquisition of genes. These differences were also observed at proteomic level, where it was possible to detect the presence of certain secreted proteins to a culture medium that simulates the host environment. These findings could also contribute to clarify the mechanism used by these two strains to colonize and survive within the host to cause infection.