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Infection and Immunity, March 2001, p. 1947-1952, Vol. 69, No. 3
Department of Epidemiology and Preventive
Medicine,1 Department of Microbiology
and Immunology,3 and Center for Vaccine
Development,4 University of Maryland School of
Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, and Department of
Microbiology, University of Sydney, Australia2
Received 20 June 2000/Returned for modification 31 August
2000/Accepted 6 December 2000
Epidemic Vibrio cholerae strains possess a large
cluster of essential virulence genes on the chromosome called the
Vibrio pathogenicity island (VPI). The VPI contains the
tcp gene cluster encoding the type IV pilus
toxin-coregulated pilus colonization factor which can act as the
cholera toxin bacteriophage (CTX
0019-9567/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.69.3.1947-1952.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Comparison of Vibrio cholerae
Pathogenicity Islands in Sixth and Seventh Pandemic Strains
) receptor. The VPI also contains
genes that regulate virulence factor expression. We have fully
sequenced and compared the VPI of the seventh-pandemic (El Tor biotype)
strain N16961 and the sixth-pandemic (classical biotype) strain 395 and
found that the N16961 VPI is 41,272 bp and encodes 29 predicted
proteins, whereas the 395 VPI is 41,290 bp. In addition to various
nucleotide and amino acid polymorphisms, there were several proteins
whose predicted size differed greatly between the strains as a result
of frameshift mutations. We hypothesize that these VPI sequence
differences provide preliminary evidence to help explain the
differences in virulence factor expression between epidemic strains
(i.e., the biotypes) of V. cholerae.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201. Phone: (410) 706-4718. Fax: (410) 706-4581. E-mail: karaolis{at}umaryland.edu.
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