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. 2021 Jul 16;21(1):214.
doi: 10.1186/s12866-021-02277-0.

Virulence factors and molecular characteristics of Shigella flexneri isolated from calves with diarrhea

Zhen Zhu #  1   2 , Weiwei Wang #  1 , Mingze Cao #  2 , Qiqi Zhu  2 , Tenghe Ma  2 , Yongying Zhang  2 , Guanhui Liu  2 , Xuzheng Zhou  1 , Bing Li  1 , Yuxiang Shi  2 , Jiyu Zhang  3
Affiliations

Virulence factors and molecular characteristics of Shigella flexneri isolated from calves with diarrhea

Zhen Zhu et al. BMC Microbiol. .

Abstract

Background: The natural hosts of Shigella are typically humans and other primates, but it has been shown that the host range of Shigella has expanded to many animals. Although Shigella is becoming a major threat to animals, there is limited information on the genetic background of local strains. The purpose of this study was to assess the presence of virulence factors and the molecular characteristics of S. flexneri isolated from calves with diarrhea.

Results: Fifty-four S. flexneri isolates from Gansun, Shanxi, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Tibet obtained during 2014 to 2016 possessed four typical biochemical characteristics of Shigella. The prevalences of ipaH, virA, ipaBCD, ial, sen, set1A, set1B and stx were 100 %, 100 %, 77.78 %, 79.63 %, 48.15 %, 48.15 and 0 %, respectively. Multilocus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) based on 8 variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) loci discriminated the isolates into 39 different MLVA types (MTs), pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) based on NotI digestion divided the 54 isolates into 31 PFGE types (PTs), and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) based on 15 housekeeping genes differentiated the isolates into 7 MLST sequence types (STs).

Conclusions: The findings from this study enrich our knowledge of the molecular characteristics of S. flexneri collected from calves with diarrhea, which will be important for addressing clinical and epidemiological issues regarding shigellosis.

Keywords: MLST; MLVA; PFGE; S. flexneri; Virulence factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Presence of virulence factors in S. flexneri isolates. Red = present; blue = absent. VT: virulence gene profile type
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
MLST clustering tree of S. flexneri isolates isolated from calves with diarrhea during 2014 to 2016. The 54 isolates were analyzed by 15-allele MLST as described in the Materials and Methods. The scale bar in the top corner of the figure represents the similarity of each strain
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Minimum spanning tree of the 54 S. flexneri isolates from calves with diarrhea based on multilocus sequence typing (MLST). The minimum spanning tree was constructed using the 7 identified STs obtained from the 54 isolates using BioNumerics software. Each circle corresponds to a single ST. The shaded zones in different colors correspond to different serotypes. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of isolates, and the color within the circles represents the serotype of the isolates. The corresponding color, serotype, number of isolates and background information are shown to the right of the minimum spanning tree
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Relationship of S. flexneri isolates isolated from calves with diarrhea based on MLVA. Isolates were analyzed using an eight-VNTR locus MLVA scheme. A dendrogram was constructed using UPGMA. The corresponding MLVA types with the copy numbers of the eight VNTRs, serotype, and background information are shown to the right of the dendrogram. The letters A-E represent 5 clusters
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Dendrogram of 54 NotI-digested S. flexneri isolates based on cluster analysis of PFGE patterns. A dendrogram was constructed using the UPGMA clustering method. The corresponding antibiotic resistance profile, PFGE pattern and background information for each strain are listed on the right side of the dendrogram. PT: PFGE type
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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