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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Clinical Infectious Diseases
Volume 14 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2024.1412408
This article is part of the Research Topic Clostridioides difficile Infections and Beyond View all 3 articles

Genomic and phenotypic characterization of a Clostridioides difficile strain of the epidemic ST37 type from China

Provisionally accepted
Chunhui Li Chunhui Li 1*Joshua Heuler Joshua Heuler 2Duolong Zhu Duolong Zhu 2Xiujuan Meng Xiujuan Meng 1Soumyadeep Chakraborty Soumyadeep Chakraborty 2Céline Harmanus Céline Harmanus 3Shaohui Wang Shaohui Wang 2Zhong Peng Zhong Peng 2Wiep Klaas Smits Wiep Klaas Smits 3Anhua Wu Anhua Wu 1Xingmin Sun Xingmin Sun 2*
  • 1 Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
  • 2 Morsani College of Medicine, USF Health, Tampa, Florida, United States
  • 3 Department of Medical Microbiology, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden, Netherlands

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Clostridioides difficile strains of sequence type (ST) 37, primarily including PCR ribotype (RT) 017, are prevalent in mainland China. Our study aimed to compare the major virulence factors of an epidemic C. difficile isolate of ST37 type (Xy06) from China with the well-characterized C. difficile reference strains R20291 (RT027) and CD630E (ST54), as well as a Chinese ST54 strain (Xy07) isolated from the same hospital. The Xy06 genome was predicted to harbor two complete prophages and several transposon-like elements. Comparative analysis of PaLoc revealed a truncated tcdA gene, a functional tcdB gene, a functional tcdC gene, and well-conserved tcdR and tcdE genes. Phenotypic comparisons showed that Xy06 was a robust producer of TcdB, readily sporulated and germinated, and strongly bound to human gut epithelial cells. In a mouse model of C. difficile infection, Xy06 was more virulent than strains CD630E and Xy07 and was comparable to strain R20291 in virulence. Our data suggest the potential threat of the epidemic ST37 strains in China.

    Keywords: Clostridioides difficile, pathogenicity locus (PaLoc), ST37, RT017, Virulence, toxin

    Received: 04 Apr 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Li, Heuler, Zhu, Meng, Chakraborty, Harmanus, Wang, Peng, Smits, Wu and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Chunhui Li, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, 410008, Hunan Province, China
    Xingmin Sun, Morsani College of Medicine, USF Health, Tampa, 33612, Florida, United States

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