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. 2023 Jun 2:14:1182090.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1182090. eCollection 2023.

Whole-genome sequencing of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from the first listeriosis foodborne outbreak in South Korea

Seung Hun Lee  1 , Sangmi Lee  2 , Sang Hun Park  3 , Ok Kyung Koo  4
Affiliations

Whole-genome sequencing of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from the first listeriosis foodborne outbreak in South Korea

Seung Hun Lee et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen that causes listeriosis in humans with severe symptoms. In South Korea, listeriosis had only been reported sporadically among hospitalized patients until the first foodborne outbreak occurred in 2018. In this study, a L. monocytogenes strain responsible for this outbreak (FSCNU0110) was characterized via whole genome sequencing and compared with publicly available L. monocytogenes genomes of the same clonal complex (CC). Strain FSCNU0110 belonged to multilocus sequence typing (MLST)-based sequence type 224 and CC224, and core genome MLST-based sublineage 6,178. The strain harbored tetracycline resistance gene tetM, four other antibiotic resistance genes, and 64 virulence genes, including Listeria pathogenicity island 1 (LIPI-1) and LIPI-3. Interestingly, llsX in LIPI-3 exhibited a characteristic SNP (deletion of A in position 4, resulting in a premature stop codon) that was missing among all CC224 strains isolated overseas but was conserved among those from South Korea. In addition, the tetM gene was also detected only in a subset of CC224 strains from South Korea. These findings will provide an essential basis for assessing the characteristics of CC224 strains in South Korea that have shown a potential to cause listeriosis outbreaks.

Keywords: Listeria monocytogenes; MLST; South Korea; WGS; foodborne outbreak; llsX.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Minimum spanning tree constructed based on MLST allelic profiles of 23 Listeria monocytogenes isolates. Each circle clusters a sequence type, and colors distinguish sources. Branch length indicates the difference in the number of alleles.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Circular genome map of the L. monocytogenes FSCNU0110 chromosome. The genome is 2,933,635, with an average GC content of 37.99%. The circular genome was generated with Proksee (https://proksee.ca/).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Phylogenetic MLST and comparison of virulence genes and antibiotic resistance genes. The foodborne outbreak strain obtained in this study was compared with the publicly available L. monocytogenes genome sequence isolated from Korea and the CC224 genome sequence known internationally, indicating the presence (color squares) or absence of a gene (white square).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Adenine deletion identified in the llsX gene in L. monocytogenes. (A) Nucleotide alignment, and (B) amino acid alignment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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