Abstract
Pathogenic Leptospira spp. is the etiological agent of leptospirosis. The high diversity among Leptospira species provides an array to look for important mediators involved in pathogenesis. Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems represent an important survival mechanism on stress conditions. vapBC modules have been found in nearly one thousand genomes corresponding to about 40% of known TAs. In the present study, we investigated TA profiles of some strains of Leptospira using a TA database and compared them through protein alignment of VapC toxin sequences among Leptospira spp. genomes. Our analysis identified significant differences in the number of putative vapBC modules distributed in pathogenic, saprophytic, and intermediate strains: four in L. interrogans, three in L. borgpetersenii, eight in L. biflexa, and 15 in L. licerasiae. The VapC toxins show low identity among amino acid sequences within the species. Some VapC toxins appear to be exclusively conserved in unique species, others appear to be conserved among pathogenic or saprophytic strains, and some appear to be distributed randomly. The data shown here indicate that these modules evolved in a very complex manner, which highlights the strong need to identify and characterize new TAs as well as to understand their regulation networks and the possible roles of TA systems in pathogenic bacteria.
Highlights
Leptospirosis is caused by pathogenic spirochetes of the genus Leptospira
We have focused this work on the study of the VapBC family because it is the most abundant type II TA family, comprising about 40% of the identified TA modules in bacterial genomes, allowing us to discuss the variability of TA systems in Leptospira
In order to investigate whether the amino acid sequences of the toxins from the VapBC modules Microaorrgeandiisvmesr2g0e1n9t, 7w, 5it6hin their own bacterial strain, we have evaluated the VapCs’ identities using the 6 of 18 tool “Global Align” for the four VapCs of L. interrogans serovar Copenhageni Fiocruz L1-130, the 15 VapCs L. licerasiae serovar Varillal strain VAR010, and the eight VapCs L. biflexa serovar Patoc 1 set o(fAtmhreese)u
Summary
Leptospirosis is caused by pathogenic spirochetes of the genus Leptospira. It is a zoonotic disease affecting humans and a wide range of animals worldwide with significant impact. The genus Leptospira comprises saprophytic and pathogenic species (family Leptospiraceae, order Spirochaetales) and were named based on their spiral shape. They are mobile and measure 6 to 20 μm in length by 0.1 μm in diameter [1,2]. Based on 16S rRNA phylogeny, DNA-DNA hybridization, pathogenicity, virulence, and in vitro growth characteristics, the genus Leptospira includes at least 21 species arranged in three groups: pathogenic, intermediate pathogenic, and non-pathogenic or saprophytic [4,5], which in turn are divided into over 200 serovars defined by agglutination with homologous antigen [3]
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