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. 2014 May 19;9(5):e96896.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096896. eCollection 2014.

Molecular characterization of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains isolated from diarrheal patients in Korea during 2003-2011

Kyung-Hwan Oh  1 , Dong Wook Kim  2 , Su-Mi Jung  1 , Seung-Hak Cho  1
Affiliations

Molecular characterization of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains isolated from diarrheal patients in Korea during 2003-2011

Kyung-Hwan Oh et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is one of the major causes of infectious diarrhea in developing countries. In order to characterize the molecular features of human ETEC isolates from Korea, we investigated the profiles of enterotoxin and colonization factor (CF) genes by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and performed multilocus sequence typing (MLST) with a total of 291 ETEC strains. The specimens comprised 258 domestic strains isolated from patients who had diarrhea and were from widely separated geographic regions in Korea and 33 inflow strains isolated from travelers visiting other Asian countries. Heat-stable toxin (STh)-possessing ETEC strains were more frequent than heat-labile toxin (LT)-possessing ETEC strains in the domestic isolates, while the detection rates of both enterotoxin genes were similar in the inflow isolates. The profile of CF genes of domestic isolates was similar to that of inflow isolates and the major CF types of the strains were CS3-CS21-CS1/PCF071 and CS2-CS3-CS21. Most of these 2 CF types were detected in ETEC strains that possess both lt and sth genes. The major MLSTST types of domestic isolates were ST171 and ST955. Moreover, the 2 major CF types were usually found concomitantly with the 2 major MLST STs, ST171 and ST955. In conclusion, our genotyping results may provide useful information for guiding the development of geographically specific vaccines against human ETEC isolates.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Profile of colonization factor (CF) genes in domestic and inflow isolates.
Figure 2
Figure 2. MLST sequence types in domestic and inflow isolates.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Phylogenetic networks of the isolates according to MLST STs.
The sizes of the circles are proportional to the number of MLST STs. The major MLST STs such as ST171 and ST955 were 23% (66/291) and 19% (55/291).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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