Population structure of Neisseria gonorrhoeae based on whole genome data and its relationship with antibiotic resistance

Matthew N. Ezewudo; Sandeep Joseph; Santiago Castillo-Ramirez; Deborah Dean; Carlos Del Rio; Xavier Didelot; Jo-Anne R. Dillon; Richard F Selden; William M. Shafer; Rosemary S. Turingan; Magnus Unemo; Timothy D. Read

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.636v1

Population structure of Neisseria gonorrhoeae based on whole genome data and its relationship with antibiotic resistance

Matthew N. Ezewudo ¹, Sandeep Joseph¹, Santiago Castillo-Ramirez², Deborah Dean³, Carlos Del Rio^1,4, Xavier Didelot⁵, Jo-Anne R. Dillon⁶, Richard F Selden⁷, William M. Shafer^8,9, Rosemary S. Turingan⁷, Magnus Unemo¹⁰, Timothy D. Read¹

1 Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States

2 Evolutionary Genomics Research Program Center for Genomic Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Cuernavaca, Mexico

3 Chlamydia Research Laboratory, Children Hospital of Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, CA, USA

4 Emory University School of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA

5 Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, UK

6 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, International Vaccine Centre, University of , Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

7 NetBio, Waltham, MA, USA

8 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA

9 Laboratories of Bacterial Pathogenesis, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Atlanta, GA, USA

10 WHO Collaborating Centre for Gonorrhoea and other STIs, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.636v1

Published: 2014-11-26
Accepted: 2014-11-26

Subject Areas: Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Studies, Genomics, Microbiology, Infectious Diseases
Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance, Population structure, Recombination, Whole genome sequence analysis, Genetic admixture

Copyright: © 2014 Ezewudo et al.
Licence: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Cite this article: Ezewudo MN, Joseph S, Castillo-Ramirez S, Dean D, Del Rio C, Didelot X, Dillon JR, Selden RF, Shafer WM, Turingan RS, Unemo M, Read TD. 2014. Population structure of Neisseria gonorrhoeae based on whole genome data and its relationship with antibiotic resistance. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e636v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.636v1

Abstract

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the causative agent of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection (STI) of major importance. As a result of antibiotic resistance, there are now limited options for treating patients. We collected whole genome sequences and associated metadata data on 76 N. gonorrhoeae strains from around the globe and searched for known determinants of antibiotics resistance within the strains. The population structure and evolutionary forces within the pathogen population were analyzed. Our results indicated a cosmopolitan gonoccocal population mainly made up of five subgroups. The estimated ratio of recombination to mutation (r/m=2.2) from our data set indicates an appreciable level of recombination occurring in the population. Strains with resistance phenotypes to more recent antibiotics (azithromycin and cefixime) were mostly found in two of the five population subgroups.